The response of riparian vegetation and river geomorphology due to
extended drought and other external stressors
Abstract
Due to long term drought, engineered structures (e.g., dams and levees),
and other stressors, river systems are at high risk of degradation.
Riparian vegetation and river geomorphology are continuously changing.
The change in river hydrology, geomorphology and riparian vegetation
have cascading impacts on other ecological aspects of the river corridor
system. In this study, spatiotemporal variations of the riparian
vegetation and the river geomorphology have been characterized using
machine learning techniques (in particular, random forest) over an
evaluation period of three decades. The study area is the Middle Rio
Grande, located in New Mexico, USA. For the study of vegetation, the
normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was used. The land cover
was classified, using Landsat images (1984 to 2020) collected from
Landsat 5, 7 and 8, to determine the change in vegetation cover and
river geomorphology. The trends of NDVI shows the increase in vegetation
cover even during long term drought due to presence of groundwater
dependent vegetation like cottonwoods. Similarly, the formation of new
stable channel islands and narrowing of the channel are some major
observations and changes in channel from this study. The availability of
long-term datasets and machine learning algorithms in Google Earth
Engine shows the potential in spatiotemporal analysis of riparian
vegetation and river geomorphology. These long-term observations will
help river managers to monitor the status of the riparian vegetation and
the impacts on the river geomorphology.