A remote sensing analysis of vegetation damage around metal smelters in the Kola Peninsula, Russia

Abstract

The huge sulphur dioxide and heavy metal emissions from the nickel and copper smelters in the Kola Peninsula, Russia, have caused severe vegetation damage and destruction in the surrounding areas during the past few decades. An attempt was made to detect changes in the state of the vegetation in the environs of the Monchegorsk smelters using Landsat MSS images from the years 1978, 1980, 1986, and 1989 as an input for muUitemporal image analysis. By comparing Normalized Difference Vegetation Index ( NDVI) values from different years, a clear deterioration in the proportion of green vegetation could be distinguished during the time period observed. Unsupervised classification of the images showed the same trend: the vegetation around the smelters has undergone severe degradation. A large composite image mosaic of the TM channels 6, 4 and 1 overlaid by a S02 distribution model showed clearly that severe damage area corresponds to an yearly average concentration of 40-60μ g m⁻ 3 of S0².