3rd International Conference on Water & Flood Management (ICWFM-2011) IDENTIFICATION OF LAND COVER CHANGES OF THE HAOR AREA OF BANGLADESH USING MODIS IMAGES

The haor basin is a low lying bowl-shaped basin covering about 6,000 sq. km in Sylhet Division, mostly in Sunamganj district. The haor basin is important fish production area of the country and it has some commercial and ecological importance. These wetland area very important habitats for the unique and dynamic ecosystems, which have immense productive and ecological value. The state of the haor ecosystem is changing and it makes the livelihood dependent on it more vulnerable. The agriculture sector of haor area is expected to be heavily impacted by land cover changes. Moreover, land cover changes are expected to increase the risk of flash floods in the haor region. Therefore, attempt has been made to identify the status of land cover of the haor areas. In this study, moderate resolution satellite MODIS images are used for detecting of the changes of Haor area. This study reveals the existing scenarios of haor area and change of patterns for the period of 9 years (2000-2008) of which satellite data are available. Studies have shown that Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as a measure of crop growth is minimum in 2004 of about 0.32 where NDVI value is maximum in 2006 of about 0.4. Analysis revealed that over the last nine years, vegetative cover area has been increased about 8.35 % compared to the vegetative cover in 2000. The change pattern of mixed land cover is somewhat unchanged except in 2001 and 2006. Water bodies has been reduced about greatly and converted to either vegetation areas or mixed land areas