Ali jouhra* 1 Mona Barakat1 Mohamad AL- Abed2 . Ezaldeen Hasan 3

(1) Department of Soil and Water Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, Tishreen University.

(2) General Authority for Remote Sensing, Damascus, Syria.

(3) Department of Water and Irrigation Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Tishreen University.

Received: 25/11/2019 Accepted:27/1/2020

Abstract

This research aimed to study the vegetation cover changes at AL-A brash Basin River using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) as well as to estimate plant factor(C) depending on NDVI for the year 2018. satellite images were used for the studied area, these images were captured by Landsat 8 OLI (Operational Land Imager) which was taken on October in (2013-2014-2015-2016-2017-2018). as well as images were taken in 2018 that representing (January, April, November). The results showed that vegetation cover was the best in 2015 with high NDVI value of 0.59, while the vegetation cover in 2016 began to deteriorate and then this deterioration later increased in 2017as that value of NDVI reached 0.48. The seasonal changes that affected on vegetation cover in 2018, showed that NDVI value in spring reached to 0.56 which is higher than it in Autumn and winter, the reason is due to the herbal cover which is completed in spring. For the vegetation factor C calculated based on the NDVI index for 2018, its value ranged between (0.24-1.23), as its value decreases in areas with good vegetation coverage. Finally, this study can be an instrument for understanding the behavior of NDVI and its temporal and spatial changes; which may help using it more precisely in many studies. \

Keywords: Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Geographic Information System (GIS), Vegetation factor (C), Landsat 8 images, AL-A brash Basin River (Tartous), Syria.

Full paper in Arabic: PDF