Automatic processing of Sentinel-2 image for Kerch peninsula lake areas extraction using QGIS and Python

Abstract

Climatic changes that have occurred over the past decades, with an acceleration of urbanization of territories and technological development, leads to the significant changes not only in the atmosphere, but also in the Earth’s surface. Surface water bodies are one of these components. Today there are 3 main methods of monitoring water bodies -field, remote and combined. In this paper, we show the possibility of automating remote monitoring of water bodies using QGIS, Python and Sentinel-2 data of the main and largest lakes of the Kerch Peninsula. Having analysed both the available satellite data and the features of the study area, we came to the conclusion that it is advisable to use the NDWI index instead of the mNDWI. After processing and analysing the Sentinel-2 data for 2018 using the data processing model presented in the work, we obtained time series of changes in the areas of the studied lakes of the Kerch Peninsula.