A change of Aral Sea's water area by satellite data

Deals with a monitoring of the change of Aral Sea's water area and its vicinity using multi-temporal satellite data and the other auxiliary sources. A mosaicked LANDSAT MSS and seven NOAA AVHRR images which had been registered to a Lambert's conformal conic coordinates were used. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) images were obtained using two band data of the visible and near-infrared. The change of Aral Sea's water area was measured by a thresholding method. The Aral Sea in the beginning of 1990s showed a decrease in area to under 55% of that in comparison with the statistic sources and maps. It was presumed that the main reason of water area decrease was caused by water consumption for the desert irrigation.<>