Delineation of Floodplain Riparian Zones for Ecological Health Assessment Using Remote Sensing

Riparian zones play a major role in defining the health of the rivers they surround. They usually run alongside riverbanks and streams as strips of vegetated land. Riparian zones serve several ecological benefits hence, it is necessary to determine the extent of riparian zone to analyze the overall riverine ecosystem health and to aid in policymaking. The present study combines remote sensing techniques with stream flow hydrology to determine the extent of floodplain riparian zones. Observed discharge data at the barrages during extreme flood events are temporally combined with the SAR imagery. The water-spread is determined by using thresholding method of the sigma naught signal over the pixels. K-means clustering is employed on the digital elevation model with varying number of cluster values to ascertain the floodplain extent derived from SAR imagery. Incorporating observed discharge data provides location specific results.