Monitoring Bioenvironmental Impacts of Dam Construction on Land Use/Cover Changes in Sattarkhan Basin Using Multi-temporal Satellite Imagery

Dam construction has caused pressure upon land use/land cover change (LUCC) which is a major cause of bio-environmental changes. In this paper, the environmental impacts of Sattarkhan dam construction from 1987 to 2010 were monitored and recent changes are analyzed, using the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) images of 1987 and 2010; the time before and after the dam construction. The methodology consists of two main stages. In the first stage, image process techniques were employed to classify satellite images using the post- classification comparison change detection method. Results indicate that irrigated agriculture, bare lands, and dry agriculture were reduced in the study period, while water bodies and built-up areas increased. Based on this finding, significant changes in land use/land cover have occurred in Sattarkhan dam basin. In the second stage the bioenvironmental indices were applied to evaluate the bioenvironmental impacts of LUCC and it revealed that the maximum detrimental indices were concerned with conversion of agricultural land use and orchards to built-up lands and water bodies. As an overall evaluation, dam construction has a positive impacts rather than negative environmental impacts.