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Use of Satellite Data for Improved Wetland Modeling and Management: Application to the Sudd Wetland, Nile River Basin

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Use of Satellite Data for Improved Wetland Modeling and Management: Application to the Sudd Wetland, Nile River Basin USE OF SATELLITE DATA FOR IMPROVED WETLAND MODELING AND MANAGEMENT: APPLICATION TO THE SUDD WETLAND, NILE RIVER BASIN A Dissertation Presented to The Academic Faculty by Courtney Di Vittorio In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctorate of Philosophy in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology May 2020 COPYRIGHT © 2019 BY COURTNEY DI VITTORIO USE OF SATELLITE DATA FOR IMPROVED WETLAND MODELING AND MANAGEMENT: APPLICATION TO THE SUDD WETLAND, NILE RIVER BASIN Approved by: Dr. Aris Georgakakos, Advisor Dr. Yao Xie School of Civil and Environmental School of Industrial and Systems Engineering Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Jingfeng Wang Dr. Augusto Getirana School of Civil and Environmental Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Engineering Center Georgia Institute of Technology University of Maryland Dr. Rafael Bras School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Georgia Institute of Technology Date Approved: [Dec 02, 2019] ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Earning my doctorate degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology has certainly been a privilege, and I have many people to thank for their support along the way. I would first like to thank my advisor, Dr. Aris Georgakakos, who has inspired me with his commitment to integrity in research, and with his passion and dedication to pursing meaningful projects. I am also very grateful for my committee members, Dr. Jingfeng Wang, Dr. Rafael Bras, Dr. Yao Xie, and Dr. Augusto Getirana for offering their support and dedicating their time to improving my dissertation. I am thankful to the students and staff within the GWRI lab: Martin, Xiaofeng, Husayn, Saubhagya, Bilal, Lida, and Xie. I appreciate their positive attitudes and have truly enjoyed getting to know them. I would also like to express gratitude toward many of my peers at Georgia Tech who have been both friends and mentors, including Brittany, Alison, Eric, Emma, Brian, Xenia, Fikret, Caroline, and Camille. I appreciate our many insightful conversations, your feedback and support, and look forward to following your successful careers. I am also thankful to many mentors at Georgia Tech that have guided me over the past six years, including Dr. Wendy Newstetter, Dr. Lisa Rosenstein, the CTL team, and Dr. Marta Hatzell. I am extremely grateful to my new co-workers at Wake Forest University, for their patience, support, and understanding as I was still completing this dissertation as an Assistant Professor in the newly established Engineering Department. Most importantly, I would like to thank my family. I appreciate my parents, who allowed my husband, daughter, and I to live in their basement (my childhood home) while I was finishing my degree. I hope my daughter Gabriella forgives me for reading academic journals to her when she was a newborn, and I am grateful to Annalee for being such an easy-going infant and allowing me to get some sleep while I was finishing this research. Finally, I am especially grateful to my husband, Damien, who has been by my side through the ups-and-downs, never doubted me, and has been a never-ending supply of much- needed support and energy. This research made use of extensive hydrologic data (river flows and lake levels) that were made available by my advisor, Professor Aris P. Georgakakos, through his past and continuing involvement with the Ministries of Water Resources and Irrigation in Uganda, Sudan, and Egypt. In-situ hydrologic observations provided by Dr. Georg Petersen were also valuable for assessing satellite-derived estimates. Additionally, this material is based upon work partially supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Award No. 80NSSC17K0325 issued through the Mission Directorate, and in part by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP) under Grant No. DGE-1650044. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF, NASA, or other organizations. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. xi LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... xvi SUMMARY ................................................................................................................. xxxiii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1 1.1 Thesis Objective, Scope, and General Approach ................................................. 4 1.1.1 Objective ............................................................................................................. 4 1.1.2 Scope .................................................................................................................. 4 1.1.3 General Approach ............................................................................................... 6 1.2 Thesis Organization................................................................................................. 10 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................... 12 2.1 The Sudd Wetland ................................................................................................... 12 2.1.1 Overview .......................................................................................................... 12 2.1.2 Mapping the Sudd Extents ................................................................................ 13 2.1.3 Hydrologic Modeling of the Sudd .................................................................... 16 2.1.4 Management of Sudd in the Context of the Nile River Basin System ............. 20 2.1.5 Research Opportunities..................................................................................... 21 2.2 Satellite-derived Wetland Land Cover and Inundation Maps ................................. 22 iv 2.2.1 Existing Satellite Products ................................................................................ 22 2.2.2 Identification of Flooded Vegetation ................................................................ 24 2.2.3 Common Classification Methods Applied to Remote Sensing Data ................ 26 2.2.4 Research Opportunities..................................................................................... 29 2.3 Wetland Modeling ................................................................................................... 30 2.3.1 Wetland Types and Their Hydrologic Processes .............................................. 30 2.3.2 Statistical Wetland Models ............................................................................... 33 2.3.3 Process-based Wetland Models ........................................................................ 35 2.3.4 Use of Remote Sensing Data in Wetland Models ............................................ 44 2.3.5 Research Opportunities..................................................................................... 46 CHAPTER 3: WETLAND LAND COVER CLASSIFICAITON AND INUNDAITON MAPPING USING MODIS ............................................................................................. 49 3.1 Overview ................................................................................................................. 49 3.2 Data ......................................................................................................................... 51 3.2.1 Land Surface Reflectance ................................................................................. 51 3.2.2 Ground Truth Imagery and Observations ......................................................... 51 3.2.3 Precipitation ...................................................................................................... 52 v 3.3 Land Cover Classification Methods and Results .................................................... 53 3.3.1 Overview .......................................................................................................... 53 3.3.2 Ground Truth Pixels ......................................................................................... 53 3.3.3 Remote Sensing Indices .................................................................................... 56 3.3.4 Best Performing Indices ................................................................................... 58 3.3.5 Distance Measures ............................................................................................ 61 3.3.6 Classification Methods ..................................................................................... 64 3.3.7 Best Performing Distance Measure and Classification Method ....................... 65 3.3.8 Uncertainty of Classification Accuracy ............................................................ 69 3.3.9 Classification of Mixels .................................................................................... 70 3.3.10 Uncertainty of Mixel Classification ............................................................... 72 3.3.11 Final Land Cover Map .................................................................................... 73 3.4 Month-by-month flooding assessments
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