Surface roughness distribution map for Iraq using satellite data and GIS techniques

This study shows the potential of using the satellite data techniques that are supported by the GIS and remote sensing (RS) approaches to produce the roughness map for the surface of Iraq and any area in a very efficient manner. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was generated using MODIS data acquired on 23 April 2015. Thirty-six points were used to build and verify the proposed model of surface roughness coefficient (n), which was correlated with NDVI layer according to the types of soil cover and land use to create the predicted distributed roughness map. The results revealed that there has been a great match between the proposed surface roughness map produced in this study with the topographical map of Iraq. The results presented also that the minimum and maximum values of surface roughness n were located in the far south and far north of about 0.029 and o.16, respectively, whereas the concentrated value of n was scattered and ranged from 0.035 to 0.16 in north, central, and south parts of the study area. The statistical analysis resulted mean, R, and COV values of 1.02, 0989, and 15.553% consecutively, which exposed the good accuracy and consistency of the predicted roughness map. Verification was conducted which revealed a good accuracy and consistency of the predicted roughness map.