Detecting the Carotenoid Pigmentation due to Haloarchaea Microbes in the Lonar Lake, Maharashtra, India Using Sentinel-2
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Detecting the Carotenoid Pigmentation due to Haloarchaea Microbes in the Lonar Lake, Maharashtra, India Using Sentinel-2 Images Rajarshi Bhattacharjee1 • Abhinandan Choubey1 • Nilendu Das1
•
Anurag Ohri1 • Shishir Gaur1
Received: 4 August 2020 / Accepted: 20 October 2020 Ó Indian Society of Remote Sensing 2020
Abstract The Lonar Lake of Maharashtra is a crater based-saline lake. During the month of June 2020, this lake suddenly changed its colour and turned to pink due to the presence of Haloarchaea microbes, and this species have a unique adaptation style to survive in high saline condition. The salinity of this lake is increasing due to less rainfall, low human intervention, and an increase in the temperature of this region. These microbes produce fantastic bloom, which can be sensed from outer space because of red–orange carotenoids production. In this work, Sentinel 2A datasets have been used for the duration of January 2020 to June 2020. These datasets have been processed in Google Earth Engine platform and several indices like Salinity Index, Surface Algal Bloom Index, and Normalized Difference Haloarchaea Index have been calculated. With the help of these indices, it has been found that the appearance of these microbes has happened in the early part of June 2020, and in more precise terms, it can be stated that between May 31 and June 5, these microbes have appeared in the lake. Keywords Lonar lake Haloarchaea Sentinel 2A Google earth engine Salinity index Normalized difference haloarchaea index
Introduction The most valuable natural resource on the earth is freshwaters, and lakes around the world have the quantity of freshwater in abundance. Lakes are the abode for various species, and it can bestow humanity with several ecosystem services. The problem of fresh and clean drinking water is a matter of global concern, and lakes can actually act as a source of remedy for this menace because lakes mostly contain freshwater, which can be used for drinking & Nilendu Das [email protected] Rajarshi Bhattacharjee [email protected] Abhinandan Choubey [email protected] Anurag Ohri [email protected] Shishir Gaur [email protected] 1
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi 221005, India
purposes. Some of the lakes can be used for aquaculture purposes, which can provide a source of commercial income to the people associated with it (Jia et al. 2015; Sterner et al. 2020). There are few impact crater lakes across the world, and one of these is the Lonar crater lake situated in the Buldhana district of the state Maharashtra, India. Lonar crater lake had formed due to the collision of a massive meteorite with the earth approximately around 50,000 years earlier. The weight of the meteorite was about 20 lakh tonnes, and it collided with a velocity of 25 km/sec (Mahto and Kushwaha 2018). Lonar crater is filled with saline water. This is the thirdlargest natural saltwater lake in the world. The water in this lake shows sal
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