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.