Space Borne Technology in Assessing and Monitoring Bank Line Erosion of Busu River, Lae City, Papua New Guinea.

Abstract

River is one of the natural features that can cause mass damage to the surrounding environment. River bank erosion is a common hydrographical issue that are experience around the world. Cities, infrastructures, communities that are located near or within the fast flowing rivers do always experience issue related to bank erosion. Continuous actions of such river issues can lead to reduction of economic stature of a region. The study was carried out to highlight and discuss specific hazard due to morphometric changes in the upper meander stream of Busu River, Lae city. The shift of river channel from time to time were analysed from 2006 high resolution Quickbird satellite image at 3.5 metre spatial resolution and 2012 Lidar image at 20cm spatial resolution coupling with 2000 base map. The analysis had shown quite major differences in each year time interval on how river shifted and caused related hazards. From the analysis it was found out that, bank line erosion or cutting was mainly because of presence of hard rock that induce high velocity and presence of lose and fine granular soil and rock structures. The analyses were all carried out in GIS and Remote Sensing environment. The study was furthered to highlight and discuss possible cause or areas of high rate of bank erosion within the study region. The study aims to undertake the river shift prediction analysis and to identify possible areas of installing embankment with fixed mitigation actions that are to be taken.