Analyzing and Mapping of Change in Water Surface Area Using Remote Sensing Data: Case Study of Band-E Amir National Park, Afghanistan

Surface water, such as rivers, lakes, swamps, and reservoirs, has an essential role in the Earth’s water cycle, influencing the ecosystemEcosystem and climateClimate locally and globally. Because of their roles, the surface area change of the lakes is accepted as an important indicator for lakeClimate change assessment. This chapter used remotely sensed data to determine spatial and temporal lake surface area changes in the selected four lakes (Band-e Zulfiqar, Band-e Haibat, Band-e Panir, Band-e Pudina) of Band-e Amir National Park, Afghanistan, with Google Earth Engine platform. To achieve the research objectives, the Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI) was selected among the other indices to extract and quantify the lake water surface area variations between May 2000 and August 2019, using multi-temporal Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM +) and Landsat 8 Operational Land Image (OLI) data. A threshold value is determined to discriminate water surfaces from the other categories. Calculated accuracy assessment results showed that the selected method could provide the spatial distributionSpatial distribution of lake water surface area changes with high accuracy. The results may help strengthen sustainable development goalsSustainable Development Goals (SDG) (SDGs).