Abstract

Groundwater as an important component of the hydrological cycle and it is the main resource for irrigation and domestic water supply particularly in arid and semi-arid area, where groundwater is a key feature that controls the distribution of vegetation. Distribution of vegetation was compared in the Shaqlawa Basin located in Kurdistan Region, Northern Iraq with the depth to groundwater by using the normalize difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the normalize different moisture index (NDMI). The NDVI and NDMI were derived from TM-5 images from 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011. Depths to groundwater measurements were available from 11 monitoring wells. The results of statistical analysis show significant relationship between groundwater table and calculated vegetated areas at the 95% confidence levels with P-value less than 0.05 for all modeled years. The NDVI values at different depth to groundwater intervals indicate that higher vegetation coverage and more plant diversity exist in areas of shallow groundwater. Drought periods affected the groundwater table and less water infiltrating into soil, then the agricultural decreased. The scarcity of precipitation and other sources for fresh water increase the demand on groundwater water in agricultural activities in the region.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.