Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV) was once the largest floodplain in the United States with more than 10 million ha Bottomland Hardwood (BLH) forests. Presently more than 80% BLH forests have been cleared for agricultural use. In the LMAV, flooding regimes demonstrated strong impacts on wildlife habitat, distribution of forest species, agricultural production, soil biogeochemical processes, and nutrient cycling. The knowledge of the spatial pattern and temporal dynamics of inundation area is crucial for evaluating the regional ecosystem functioning and services. Although previous work had revealed the spatial pattern of the flooding frequency using Landsat imageries, flooding duration and temporal variations have not been clearly understood yet. This study intends to map flooding regimes including spatial distribution, frequency, monthly and inter-annual variations using time-series MODIS data from 2001 to 2018.
Results/Conclusions
Our results show that northern and southern LMAV have longer annual flooding days (~40 days) and higher flood frequency compared to the middle part of the LMAV. Regional flooding area show significantly inter-annual changes with the largest flooding area in 2015. For most of the LMAV, flooding lasts from December to March with the largest flooding area in January. These results are expected to provide useful information for policy makers and landowners to design BLH restoration plans and management practices to improve the quality of wildlife habitat and ecosystem health conditions.