Developing A Map of Floodplain Alterations Across the World's Major River Basins
Abstract
Human activities are altering natural floodplains and aggravating flood risks, yet a comprehensive assessment of long-term floodplain alterations across the world's major river basins does not exist. To fill this knowledge gap, we are developing the first ever spatially explicit estimates of land use change along the world's floodplains covering 28 years (1992-2019) at 250-m resolution. This floodplain land use change estimate was derived from two input data sources: (i) the high-resolution floodplain extent dataset GFPLAIN250m (Nardi et al., 2019), and (ii) the annual remote sensing-based European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (CCI) land use dataset. We applied a statistical approach to detect the non-uniqueness in floodplain land use between two end-years of comparison. We then quantified how the land use transitioned from one class to the other(s) using Transition Matrix Analysis. Finally, we developed temporal graphs showing the inter-class land transitions throughout the 28-year period. The results reveal a significant loss of natural floodplains across the world during 1992-2019, with more than 335,000 sq. km of agricultural expansion and new urban areas within the floodplains. Our additional analyses suggest that different continents across the world are exhibiting different characteristic patterns of alterations. Based on the above, our study will enable policy makers around the world to explicitly link development trajectories with potential floodplain restoration and conservation scenarios.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2022
- Bibcode:
- 2022AGUFM.H15N0970R