Estimation of Suspended Sediment Concentration in Downstream of the Ba River Basin using Remote Sensing Images

Abstract

Assessing the tendency of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) in the river watersheds
enables a better understanding of the hydromorphological properties of its basins and the associated
processes. In addition, analyzing this trend is essential to address several important issues such as erosion,
water pollution, human health risks, etc. Therefore, it is critical to determine a proper method to quantify
spatio-temporal variability in SSC. In recent years, remote sensing and GIS technologies are being widely
applied to support scientists, researchers, and environmental resource investigators to quickly and
synchronously capture information on a large scale. The combination of remote sensing and GIS data will
become the reliable and timely updated data source for the managers, researchers on many fields. There
are several tools, software, algorithms being used in extracting information from satellites and support for
the analysis, image interpretation, data collection. The information from satellite images related to water
resources includes vegetational cover, flooding events on a large scale, rain forecast, population
distribution, forest fire, landslide movements, sedimentation, etc., and especially information on water
quality, sediment concentration. This paper presents the initial result from LANDSAT satellite image
interpretation to investigate the amount of sediment carried downstream of the Ba river basin.