New Approaches and Advanced Methodology in Integrated Water Resources Management: Amu Darya River Basin

Agriculture and livestock are the main sectors of a river basin region’s economy, particularly along the Amu Darya River. This makes sustainable pasture and land management critical for human well-being, economic stability, social welfare, and ecosystem resilience. Both human-induced and natural factors play a key role in the sustainability issues of rural mountainous communities in the Amu Darya river basin that rely heavily on land resources. This study focuses predominantly on finding a linear relationship between values of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and climatic variables such as air temperature, land surface temperature, precipitation using new approaches and advanced methodology in the Google Earth Engine (GEE). This helps gain an understanding of the seasonal and inter-annual behavior and dynamics of the vegetative characteristics. Overall, the implications of this study are directed toward the general understanding of the interaction between terrestrial ecosystems and climate change. The study encompassed three river basins along the Amu Darya-Kunduz River basin in Afghanistan, the Kafirnigan River basin in Tajikistan, and the Kyzyl-Suu River basin in Kyrgyzstan.