Integration of Artificial Intelligence and Remote Sensing Techniques for the monitoring of dam environment: case of Kulekhani 1 Reservoir in Nepal

Currently natural and anthropogenic activities around dam areas are highly affected .. Complex landscape, gully erosion, landslide, flood triggered by heavy rainfall , climate change and construction activities around dam area, continuing reservoir sedimentation in dam environment are major threat for continue supply of power in same scale. The lower and middle mountains part of the Nepal hydropower projects have found serious challenges for long term sustainable power supply due to complex topography and undermine the environmental performance in the hydropower project. In this study, we have explored major environmental challenges one of the oldest storage type of hydropower project, Kulekjhani I of Nepal using time serious satellite images (i.e Landsat Images, QuickBird, GeoEye, SPOT6/7). First, we have evaluated the surface water content of the reservoir from 1988-2020 applying Normalize Difference Water Index (NDWI) using Landsat images. Secondly, evaluated the land use land cover change of dam environment ( Kulekhani basin) using support vector machine (SVM) classification algorithm in 2004-2020). Thirdly, the climate induce changes were evaluated for the analysis of major challenges of the reservoir area. The surface water content level was expanded in the study area due to high sedimentation collection and deposition where multiple factor were associated such as landslide around the dam area , flood, gully erosion and other development activities. Very high landslide risk area was observed around the dam area. Similarly, residential area and barren land including landslide were increased from 25.19 (ha) to 55.49 (ha) and 22.12 to 32.36 (ha), respectively between 2004 to 2020. The road construction materials released directly deposited in reservoir and not found the effective control mechanism. The mean temperature is in increasing trend and annual precipitation is in decreasing which highly affected on water resources of dam. These all causes showed that the dam environment of Kulekhani I has found major challenges for sustainable continuous power supply.