Water quality monitoring of Al-Habbaniyah Lake using remote sensing and in situ measurements

The use of remote sensing and GIS in water monitoring and management has been long recognized. This paper, however discusses the application of remote sensing and GIS specifically in monitoring water quality parameters in Al-Habbaniyah Lake, and the results were compared with in situ measurements. Variations of different parameters under investigation were as follows: temperature (15-33 degrees C), pH (7-9), dissolved oxygen (6-11mg/L), BOD5 (0.5-1.8), electrical conductivity (200-2280 mu S/cm), TDS (1471520 mg/L), TSS (68-3200), turbidity (5-51), nitrate (0.7-20 mg/l), phosphate (77-220 mu g/l), and chlorophyll-a (0.9-130 mu g/l). Remote sensing results revealed that the band 5 was most likely significantly correlated with turbidity in the winter. Band 2 and 3 was most likely significantly correlated with TDS in autumn and summer, while band 2 was most likely significantly correlated with TSS in autumn, band 2 is most likely significantly correlated with chlorophyll-a in autumn. The current study results demonstrated convergence between in situ and remote sensing readings. The models were used to explore the values of each of chlorophyll-a, TSS, TDS, and turbidity did not deviate much from the values actually measured in the three seasons. Nevertheless, they were very useful in anticipating all seasons of the study due to the insignificant deviation between the remotely sensed values and actual measured values.