Science Inventory

Reconstruction of Sea-Land Interactions between Terrestrial Vegetation Cover and Water Quality Constituents in the Mattapoisett Harbor Area During the 1991 Hurricane Bob Event

Citation:

Chang, N., X. Wei, C. Mostafiz, J. Yang, J. Weiss, AND M. Belaval. Reconstruction of Sea-Land Interactions between Terrestrial Vegetation Cover and Water Quality Constituents in the Mattapoisett Harbor Area During the 1991 Hurricane Bob Event. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation. Elsevier BV, AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, 83:101929, (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2019.101929

Impact/Purpose:

Communicate to scientific community and practical users about a new remote sensing technique and its application on reconstruction of water quality in coastal water bodies. The investigation results also highlight the impacts of hurricanes to water quality in coastal stream and its interaction with sea at the river delta.

Description:

Hurricane Bob passed over the New England region in August 1991, causing significant damage to life, property, and the environment, making it one of the costliest hurricanes in New England history. The environmental impact of a hurricane of this magnitude warrants careful assessment to devise preventive measures and mitigation strategies to bolster water resources management programs against future events. In this paper, we show the reconstructed simultaneous impacts of Hurricane Bob on the vegetative cover of the Mattapoisett river watershed and water quality in the Mattapoisett Harbor with the aid of remote sensing for earth observations. The water quality impacts from hurricane, especially in Total Organic Carbon (TOC) and Sea Surface Salinity (SSS), can be identified from the reconstructed SSS and TOC variations near coastal estuaries. The variations are due to the influx of freshwater from coastal Mattapoisett River to the continent-ocean transition between natural tides and bay waves. Using the Landsat satellite images, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and water quality constituents (TOC and SSS) were reconstructed and retrieved for the assessment of the sea-land interactions during the Hurricane Bob event in 1991. Results indicate phenomenal interactive patterns between the harbor and the coastal watershed, as well as the riverine system. TOC and NDVI, especially in the upper watershed region, can be strongly correlated with hurricane impacts via the singular value decomposition analysis.