DETECTION OF SOIL MOISTURE CONTENT AS A TOOL FOR ANTHROPOGENIC IMPACT

Recently, spatial analysis has taken place as a tool to detect the environmental changes and
understanding the anthropogenic impacts in different scales and times. One of the effective remote sensing
techniques is spectral indices algorithm which is used to differentiate preciously between different land
cover elements. In this paper the moisture an index is applied on the multispectral Landsat satellite images
Thematic Mapper (TM) to detect the soil moisture changes during different time series. Four launched
years (1990, 2001, 2009, and 2016) of satellite image are used for the north coast of the Kuwait Bay
which is occupied by the desalination Al-Subiya plant. The impact of the anthropogenic desalination plant
on the coastal area was recognized and the increase of saturated area is classified into four ranks from low
to high. The created maps show that the outlet channel had changed from water to high moisture assigned
class that indicates the accumulation of a considerable amount of deposits as a result of neglecting channel
maintenance.