Change Detection of Lake Chad Water Surface Area Using Remote Sensing and Satellite Imagery

The Lake Chad located in the west-central Africa in the Sahel region at the edge of the Sahara experienced severe drought during 1970s and 1980s and overexploitation (unintegrated and unsustainable use), which is a result of variant land uses and water management practices during the last 50 years. This resulted in a decline of the water level in the Lake and surrounding rivers. The present study analyzed satellite images of Lake Chad from Landsat-MSS, Landsat-OLI to investigate the change of the open water surface area during the years of 1973, 1987, 2001, 2013, and 2017. Supervised classifications were performed for the land cover analysis. The open water area in 1973 was covering 16,157.34 km2 approximately, and that was 64.6% of the total lake area in the 1960s. As an ultimate result of the extreme drought that the study area witnessed through 1970s-1980s, the open water area has decreased to 1831.44 km2, i.e. around 11.33%, compared to that in 1973. The dilemma that the study area is suffering from is believed to be a catastrophic complication of the aforementioned drought crisis, which arose as an ultimate result the climate change, global warming, and the unintegrated and unsustainable use of water challenges the study area is still encountering.