Spatio-temporal analysis of vegetation and oil spill intensity in Ogoniland

Dutsenwai, Hafsat Saleh; Ahmad, Baharin Bin; Tanko, A.I.; Mijinyawa, Abubakar

International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences

Int. j. adv. appl. sci.

EISSN: 2313-3724

Print ISSN: 2313-626X

Volume 4, Issue 4 (April 2017), Pages: 81-90

Title: Spatio-temporal analysis of vegetation and oil spill intensity in Ogoniland

Author(s): Hafsat Saleh Dutsenwai ^{1, 2}, Baharin Bin Ahmad ^3,*, A.I. Tanko ², Abubakar Mijinyawa ⁴

Affiliation(s):

¹Department of Remote Sensing, Faculty of Geoinformation and Real Estate, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor, Malaysia
²Department of Geography, Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Bayero University Kano (BUK), Kano, Nigeria
³Department of Geoinformation, Faculty of Geoinformation and Real Estate, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor, Malaysia
⁴Department of Geoscience and Petroleum Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP), Perak, Malaysia

https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2017.04.013

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Abstract:

Ogoniland, Niger Delta Nigeria is an area that has been subjected to terrestrial oil spills from the beginning of oil exploration in the 1950s till date. Despite many studies and practical efforts by different organizations and multinational companies, oil spills continue to occur and their impacts persist. These oil spills are regarded as the major cause of environmental degradation in the study area. The objective of this study was to ascertain the fact that oil spill is the major cause of environmental changes in Ogoniland using Normalized Difference vegetation Index (NDVI) and statistical methods. Remote sensing satellite data (Landsat 5TM (1984), Landsat 7ETM+ (2013, 2014 and 2015), and geographical coordinates of spill locations were used to observe vegetation dynamics with respect to the intensity of oil spills. For vegetation dynamics, the geographical coordinates were used to observe temporal variations of NDVI values at each spill point while statistical analyses were used to identify the relationships between the intensity of the spills and the changes in vegetation. It was observed that changes in vegetation quality and quantity can be attributed to oil spill occurrences, however, the level of change in vegetation cannot be ascribed to the frequency or intensity of the oil spills. Finally, this study asserts that oil spill is the major cause of environmental changes in the study area.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Keywords: Spill points, Intensity, NDVI, Spatio-temporal change

Article History: Received 11 October 2016,Received in revised form 17 February 2017, Accepted 25 February 2017

Digital Object Identifier:

https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2017.04.013

Citation:

Dutsenwai HS, Ahmad BB, Tanko AI, and Mijinyawa A (2017). Spatio-temporal analysis of vegetation and oil spill intensity in Ogoniland. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 4(4): 81-90

http://www.science-gate.com/IJAAS/V4I4/Dutsenwai.html

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