Study and monitoring of wetland area changes and its impact on wetland surface temperature using NDWI, MNDWI, and AWEI indices (case study: Hor-alazim and Shadegan wetlands)

Monitoring and conservation of the wetlands are very important due to their role in eco-system protection and providing the socio-economic needs of the local community. Sarp and Ozcelik (2017); Nandi et. al. (2018); Ali et. al. (2019) used NDWI, MNDWI and AWEI indices to monitor waterbodies changes based on Landsat (ETM+, OLI) dataset. In this study, these indices were applied to monitor area changes of Hor-alazim and Shadegan wetlands in Khuzestan province that were selected as case study areas for period 2000-2018. Wetlans area changes were evaluated for three months, include April, September, and January in any year that represent inflow changes. Mann-Kendall statistics was also used to study the changes in a wetlands area. The  MNDWI index in comparison to NDWI and AWEI has better performance and higher accuracy. The results of Man-Kendall statistics showed that wetlands area changes have no significance relation in 95% confident level. Also, the correlation between temperature and wetland area changes showed that on average, the wetlands temperature changes by ±0.4 C for per 1000-hectare area change.