Multiyear Space Monitoring of Shoreline Fluctuations and Vegetation Status in Northeast Caspian Coastal Zone

Information about positive and negative sea setup and land cover within coastal zone is of high interest due to close proximity to oil production infrastructure. Valuation of vegetation status is of high importance, because vegetation is a basic indicator of the environmental stability of the studied area.
National Center of Space Researches and Technology, NSA RK by the order of Tengizchevroil LLP have been conducting monitoring of shoreline and vegetation status studies of Northeast Caspian during 6 years (2002-2007) for a March-November season. Multiyear data of band 1 and 2 of TERRA/MODIS satellite sensor was used for these purposes.
On the first step near shore territory of Northeast Caspian easily can be divided by 2 classes on space images: sea surface and land surface. More “close and far” locations of the shore line at high and low tides, were registered during 2002-2007 and shown as a result of interpretation of weekly TERRA/MODIS imageries. Long term monitoring of shore line locations at Caspian setup allows calculating of probability density for the position of water-land border of the coastal area at the regular grid. The cell size of such grid is defined by spatial resolution of MODIS images.
Time series of the normalized difference vegetation indexes, NDVI, for coastal landscapes and their territorial components were analyzed for estimation of vegetation status. As result seasonal and annual differences of NDVI values and large variability of vegetation dynamics of high and low lands vegetation communities were revealed. It was demonstrated that high lands vegetation status, those on Mangyshlak and Ustyurt plateaus, remain stable during vegetation period and are not much impacted by Caspian setup and the shore line fluctuations. The opposite situation is being observed at low elevated coastal lands of Caspian depression. The most typical year-to-year differences (time shift of peak values) in vegetation indexes curves is basically caused by temperature conditions in the beginning of the vegetation period and intensive Caspian setup phenomena.
Thus space monitoring and analysis of vegetation dynamics during 2002-2007 allow to acknowledge variations of weather conditions and intensive sea setup as the strongest natural climatic factors considerably impacting on vegetation status in the Northeast Caspian coastal zone.