Effects of polluted rainfall related to burning Kuwaiti oil wells on vegetation in south of Iran

The products of NOAA-AVHRR are an appropriate data to detect any changes in vegetation cover and to determine its distribution pattern. The most valuable effect of the use of NOAA-AVHRR is that this satellite source is the only instrument that is capable of demonstrating a change of vegetation cover over a large area. AVHRR data are useful for large scale land cover because of their multi-temporal nature; daily AVHRR data are formed into normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) composites. NOAA-AVHRR were used to monitor the vegetation cover change due to pollution resulted from the Kuwaiti oil well fires. NOAA-AVHRR data sets, maximum 10-days NDVI images (GAC) time series for 1989-1993 were used. They have shown that NDVI is an excellent indicator to study green vegetation cover globally or locally. The NDVI profiles which were produced for many points for 1989 to 1993 shows high reduction in NDVI values in most parts in 1991. Not only the peak of NDVI values in the growing season decreased, but also the area under the NDVI curve decreased in 1991.