ANALYSIS OF SEASONAL PRECIPITATION’S INFLUENCE ON AREAL CHANGE OF LAKES: A CASE STUDY IN TASHK, BAKHTEGAN, MAHARLU LAKES

Surface waters such as lakes are one of the irreplaceable strategic resources for human survival and social development. Great concern about changes in the size and quality of many of the world’s lakes has arisen mainly as a result of increased urbanization and agricultural development. Moreover, lakes are believed to play a considerable role in the global climate change by acting as a source of atmospheric greenhouse gasses such as methane and a sink for carbon and nitrogen Satellite remote sensing can be the appropriate and cost efficient approach for monitoring and change detection of a specific place on earth surface especially Sentinel-2 sensor including bands with 10-meter resolution can make them more accurate. The objective of this paper is to calculate the area changes of lakes due to yearly and seasonal precipitations, based on the post-classification approach using SVM classification of Sentinel-2 satellite images. The results showed an intense increasing trend in the lake surface area after occurring seasonal rainfalls. Bakhtegan Lake showed the most rate of changes in water area before and after seasonal precipitations, which can be a reason of drying up.