Riverine Flood Damage Assessment of Cultivated Lands along Chenab River Using GIS and Remotely Sensed Data: A Case Study of District Hafizabad, Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Flood is one of a kind of disasters which harms human and animal life around the globe. Pakistan has been observing massive floods for many years because of daily and seasonal variation in the temperature levels. Wheat, rice, sugarcane and cotton are major crops cultivated in Punjab region of Pakistan in which rice and sugarcane are mostly effected by floods. In this research paper, damage assessment of cultivated land in district Hafizabad along Chenab River has been calculated. Supervised Classification and Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) methods are applied. Pre-flood 2014, post-flood 2014, and pre-flood 2015 Landsat 8 images have been used to calculate the extent of damages to cultivated lands. Water, sand, silt, bare soil and vegetation are classified to identify damage. Results show that vegetation cover has plummeted to 50% after the arrival of flood 2014 in the Chenab. Similarly, 6.7047% of sand and 15.7339% of bare soil deposits have surfaced which have not yet been removed from fertile lands in 2015. 18.4376% standing crop damage has been analyzed under this study. 14.0245% silt deposits have been calculated as post-flood effects. 46.4260% land has been cultivated in 2015 which is 15.5024% lower than 2014 cultivated land. Furthermore, field verification survey has given promising results and has a great correlation with satellite based recovery results.

Operational Monitoring and Damage Assessment of Riverine Flood-2014 in the Lower Chenab Plain, Punjab, Pakistan, Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

“…The main data source of this study is Landsat 8 imagery (Table 1), acquired from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Landsat images have a temporal resolution of ~16 days that has provided free up-to-date images across the globe since 1972 [22,33,38,39]. However, the study area provides a unique opportunity with a high temporal resolution of ~8 days since the area lies within two adjacent Landsat paths of 150 and 151 ( Figure 2; Table 1), which enables us to make an in-depth analysis of the flood duration and inundation.…”

“…Likewise, the 2011 flood affected 5.88 million people and damaged standing crops and infrastructure covering an area of 16,440 km 2 and 1882 km 2 , respectively [19]. In 2014, heavy rains coupled with the melting of glaciers in the upstream part of Chenab caused flash flooding in mountainous areas and riverine floods in the upper and lower Chenab plain [20][21][22]. It was considered one of the worst riverine flood catastrophes in terms of damages to standing crops, housing, and infrastructure along the floodplain areas of the Chenab river [13,16,22,23].…”

“…In 2014, heavy rains coupled with the melting of glaciers in the upstream part of Chenab caused flash flooding in mountainous areas and riverine floods in the upper and lower Chenab plain [20][21][22]. It was considered one of the worst riverine flood catastrophes in terms of damages to standing crops, housing, and infrastructure along the floodplain areas of the Chenab river [13,16,22,23]. This indicates that flooding is a serious problem in Pakistan that requires significant efforts to reduce its effects, mainly through effective post-disaster monitoring and management, especially in the Chenab plain [22][23][24].…”

“…It was considered one of the worst riverine flood catastrophes in terms of damages to standing crops, housing, and infrastructure along the floodplain areas of the Chenab river [13,16,22,23]. This indicates that flooding is a serious problem in Pakistan that requires significant efforts to reduce its effects, mainly through effective post-disaster monitoring and management, especially in the Chenab plain [22][23][24]. As such, we provide a scientific basis that provides a rapid flood 2014 mapping and monitoring using Landsat-8 data, with a focus on the lower Chenab plain.…”

“…We first provide the limitation of previous studies on the riverine flood of 2014 that focused less on post-flood mapping, monitoring, and damage assessment. These previous studies mainly focused on the upper Chenab plain [13,16,21,22] without focusing on the lower Chenab plain. This is despite the fact that the lower Chenab plain is a fertile flood-prone plain and considered an economically underdeveloped region in the Punjab province of Pakistan.…”