The Use of Normalized Differences Vegetation Index in the Determination and Evaluation of Degradation Status of Vegetation Cover in Sinjar Mountain / Ninevah Governorate

Abstract

Sinjar Mountain is situated to the north-west of Iraq, which is one of the important sites of the range lands in the country. Many recent studies and researches in the world have shown the possibility of using means and technology of remote sensing in the determination and evaluation of cases of vegetation cover degradation depending on the normalized differences vegetation index (NDVI) and on the other vegetation indexes. The study included the use of visual interpretation methods in the analysis of landsat images with (MSS) and (TM) systems, which are taken in different periods of time during the year seasons and with different spectral bands (1,2,3,4,7) for Sinjar Mountain and Badyat Al-Jazeera. The correlation between vegetation indexes such as simple ratio (SR), vegetation index (VI), normalized differences vegetation index (NDVI) and soil adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) were studied through the calculation of spectral reflectences values with different wave lengths. The results showed the presence of strong relation between the density of vegetation cover and the evaluation of deterioration state with the reflection values with the red spectral band. It has also been found that there is a strong correlation between the values of (NDVI) and the density of vegetation cover and the degradation of range lands, in addition to the influence of sloping degree and direction in Sinjar Mountain on the (NDVI) calculated values.