Comparison between satellite image analysis and site data for monitoring Trail Road landfill site

Human life affects the environment in different ways; therefore monitoring human's actions is very important to safeguarding the environment. Studying the human impact on nature is essential to protecting our environment from contaminations. Landfill sites are one of the most influential structures upon nature. Landfills pose a potential danger to the surrounding environment. Therefore they must be supervised for long periods of time to determine their impact. Monitoring the effects of the landfill sites on the surrounding area over a period of time is a useful tool to analyze and understand its effect on the environment. This research work presents a study which uses data analyzed from satellite images for the monitoring of landfill sites. The data collected from satellite images is compared with the data collected from ground measurements. The main goal of this research is to verify the usefulness of remote sensing as a tool for landfill site monitoring. The ground measurement data used in this study is from yearly reports of a monitoring program by the City of Ottawa that are collect by Dillon Limited. The satellite images used are Landsat satellite images downloaded from the U.S. Geological Survey and Earth Resources, and analyzed by ERDAS IMAGINE and ArcMap software. The images are taken from four years: May 1992, August 1998, October 2000, and September 2001. The images are analyzed in terms of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST). Results from the LST and NDVI value of different years are compared with the results of monitoring program [sic] that has been conducted for the City of Ottawa. Preliminary data analysis of the satellite images reveals that the surface temperature of the landfill site is always higher than the immediate surrounding areas. Any significant changes in LST and NDVI value, especially in the surrounding vegetation areas, are regarded as suspect sites which may be influenced by the development of the landfill site. The result of the comparison between testing and sampling at monitoring wells with satellite image analysis confirms the areas that are more contaminated. The polluted areas show the same locations from both analyses. However, changes at LST and NDVI value analysis could imply the pollution movement earlier than the traditional site sampling monitoring method. These results show the possibility of combining the ground sampling system and satellite images analysis to improve landfill site monitoring.