Area Change Monitoring of Dokan & Darbandikhan Iraqi Lakes Using Satellite Data

Iraq is one of the richest countries, especially in the Middle East and generally in the world, in natural resources such as water due to existing of Tigris and Euphrates rivers, tributaries branches, marshlands, and lakes which are already affected by climate change. Thus, Dokan and Darbandikhan lakes (in the north of Iraq) have been monitored and studied throughout the past eighteen years (1999-2016) in term of area and average monthly rainfall (AMR) of feeding basin to Figure out the effect of historical climate change. Landsat images satellite (5, 7, and 8) types were used to collect 36 satellite images for the study area (18 images for each lake), ArcGIS 10.2 program was used as well to create a map of the water drainage networks. The results showed that the average variation in AMR of feeding basins of the two lakes was about 1.12. Also, the overall average area of Darbandikhan and Dokan lakes were about 71.52 km2 and 168.86 km2 respectively. In addition, overall average AMR of Darbandikhan and Dokan lakes were 1.02 km3 and 0.92 km3 consecutively. In addition, the correlation coefficient between area and AMR of feeding basin for Darbandikhan and Dokan Lakes was 75% and 90% respectively. The coefficient of variance (COV) has been found as well to be the lowest for Dokan Lake area, which was about 23% in comparison with Darbandikhan which was about 39%