Remote Sensing Approach for Monitoring and Assessing the Turbidity Variation: A Study in the Tigris River, Upstream Al-Kut Barrage

Controlling water turbidity is a significant problem facing water treatment plants. Therefore, using the remote sensing approach via satellite images is the aim of overcoming this problem. This research explores the turbidity variation upstream of Al-Kut Barrage on the Tigris River. The change in the surface reflectance of the water in this area was calculated using Green Band (band 3) and Red Band (band 4) of Landsat-8 level-1, which are the most sensitive bands that could be used to estimate the surface reflectance. Then, the reflectance was calibrated against 24 in situ turbidity measurements (R2=0.89) using MATLAB software, which was used to analyze the results. This fitting is then applied for the 2020 year to study the monthly turbidity variation using satellite images to explore the turbidity variation. The result showed their maximum monthly turbidity in April (34.18 NTU (Nephelometric Turbidity Unit)), with high flow was due to suspended flow particles that caused by exceeding the shear stress and the minimum in October (18.82 NTU) with low discharge, which has an average (28.61 NTU). Therefore, this study confirmed that satellite observations can be used to estimate the surface turbidity.