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Normalized Difference Vegetative Index-related Assessment for Climate Change Impact on Indigenous Communities from High Resolution IKONOS Satellite Imagery in West Papua

High-resolution satellite imagery permits acquisition of critical data to observe climate-change and environmental impact on conflict-impacted indigenous communities with co-existing socio-economic factors, often within unstable regimes. Conflict may prevent direct access in remote regions to validate civilian conflict actor evidence. In such cases use of remote sensing tools, techniques, and data are extremely important. Software-based imagery assessment can quantify radiometrically calibrated or Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and provide temporal changes with rapid detection over large search areas. In this work we evaluate recent trends in equatorial alpine glacier ablation to address the probability of indigenous water scarcity, as pure glacial water reserves are depleted near the Grasberg gold and copper mine in the Carstenz region, Western part of Papua Island, North of Oceania.


INTRODUCTION
The global security landscape is changing rapidly, influenced by geopolitical and ideological shifts, with increasing survival pressures on indigenous ethnic actors on the fringes of society. Understanding the driving factors and dynamics behind vulnerable communities may help solve disagreements and prevent armed conflict. Today satellite imagery provides us with the unprecedented ability to monitor a wide range of man-made and natural land cover activities in high resolution from space-based platforms. Our recent engineering market survey for Airbus of upstream and downstream satellite-based imaging requirements from 90 key military and civilian stakeholders highlighted the moderate but growing dependence on high resolution optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) [1] for both man-made and natural humanitarian disasters. We also presented the importance of space exploitation to the UK Government [2].
This ability allows various state and non-state actors, often Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), to monitor isolated regions with climate significance, or are at risk of climate security destabilisation [3]. This work looks at mining activities in a poorly documented region [4], and follows previous government-indigenous communities conflict studies including: Southern Sudan, and Zimbabwe [5 -6]. As one of the first researchers to gain access to high resolution satellite imagery awards from the GeoEye Foundation after 2003 for indigenous community studies, we developed a customer-driven 'image change' method, used by NGOs and humanitarian media-relations to meet user needs.
Very few maps or similar data are available in such areas due to their inherent inaccessibility.
Due to ongoing conflicts in Grasberg, West Papua between government forces, mining staff, and indigenous tribes seeking re-independence from directly imposed Indonesian rule, ground measurement and glacial monitoring is dangerous, as evidenced by deaths of tourists, journalists [7], and our ground contact Kelly Kwalik, killed the day before our Papuan imagery press release [8], close to the Tembagapura mine complex. Tembagapura is the biggest and highest copper mine in the world, whose rim is 4270 metres above sea level, and the region of our study. Kwalik's death heightened existing tensions in the region. Prior to his death, he advocated passive resistance to tribal homeland occupation by Indonesian military forces. The accelerated rate of mine and infrastructure development and consequent environmental destruction adds to rising tension. Such volatile situations make satellite imaging the safest route to obtaining data for analysis of civilian actor resource access, tropical glaciers, and mine workings for regional issues impacting remote indigenous communities. Satellite imaging has led the market, but there is increasing use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle platforms in isolated areas, due to operational flexibility, with reduced costs when compared with satellite imagery [9]. Because of the area's remoteness and persistent cloud cover, available aerial photography of the Irian Jaya glaciers is limited. Before 1975, the only vertical aerial photographs of the Puncak Jaya glaciers were obtained in 1942 during an aerial survey using a USAF trimetrogon military camera. More recently medium altitude (up to 11.5 km) vertical aerial photographs of the region were obtained from several combined Indonesian and Australian military mapping operations (1976 -1981), producing a few useful images, due to the high number of partly cloudy and overcast days per year [10].
However, at the turn of the millennium, with legislation permitting development of high resolution civilian satellite imaging systems in the West, combined with declassification of existing military satellite data that high-resolution now provides the detail required to look for changes in small equatorial glaciers. Even with the launch of Landsat 7 (1999), at the time of our imagery demand, Landsat 7 provided insufficient resolution for our requirements (15m panchromatic band 8 spatial resolution).
However, developments in SAR will largely supersede optical based camera system use by the mid-2020s [11] significantly increasing opportunities for high resolution satellite imaging. Recorded tropical mountain glacier retreat can supplement the instrument record of tropical tropospheric climate change monitoring because they have receded drastically since the late 1800s. Tropical glaciers exist in three regions: the Andes, the East African highlands, and Western New Guinea [12]. As glaciers have almost universally receded, this fact strongly suggests this is a global wide phenomenon, quantified in a comprehensive study of global glaciers [13]. Global observation favours atmospheric warming as the primary driver [14] because atmospheric moisture changes are more localised; evidence supporting this hypothesis comes from ice-core measurements conducted by Thompson [15] from glaciers on Kilimanjaro due to atmospheric warming. The frequency of present-day ground-truthing observations has increased vastly due to the international tourist trade, and rapid access to imaging through social media, generating large amounts of potential ground data collection in accessed regions. Anecdotal evidence of glacial retreat is also provided by a long history of mountaineers and climbers to the region [16].
In Papua, analysis of climate forcing of the 20 th Century glacier recession, however, has been hindered by a lack of field studies on the glaciers. This is due to recent conflict restricted access, as well as physical inaccessibility-mountainous terrain, extreme persistent cloud conditions, high altitude etc. In fact our Pleaides 2015 data acquisition was rescheduled, even after maximising the probability of clear skies, due to cloud conditions.

Indigenous Community Study Region
Indigenous Amungme and Komoro West Papuan tribes live in close proximity to the Grasberg gold and copper mine complex (2.6 Million hectares), which impacts its delicate alpine ecosystems and glaciers. Grasberg is an important factor in the Indonesian economy.
The mine and surrounding glacier region were first prospected and mapped by Dutch geologists in the 1930s, after colonial reigns of the Spanish, and British. First explored by the Portuguese (1526), it was in 1623 that Dutchman Jan Carstenz, became the first to record a snow-capped peak on the far horizon. 300 years later a British expedition penetrated the interior and confirmed a great mountain towering over the New Guinea jungles, with a people documented thoroughly in the work of Heinrich Harrer [16]. This ecological area has compromised several unique ecosystems co-located due to the mountainous region, composed of: alpine meadow, wetland and mangrove forest. Freeport began construction of a 120 km long highway between Amamapare on the coast and the Carstensz highland plateau, to serve a new city, Tembagapura, 'copper city.' Grasberg has been a source of great wealth for shareholders, but for local communities has impacted pure water availability. The Brisbane Catholic Justice and Peace Commission [17] described the conflict as a 'slow-motion genocide', warning its indigenous population is at risk of becoming 'an anthropological museum exhibit of a bygone culture.' Freeport's operation began 4270 metres above sea level, and upon completion expect to leave a 450 metre deep crater. A comprehensive report [18], stated concerns over Rio Tinto's failure to address basic human rights, and shortcomings in environmental protection in this delicate environment, including: copper wastage, pollution, legal breaches, engineering inadequacies, habitat destruction, river tailing toxicity, and food chain contamination.  Some tribes were forcefully relocated, leaving thousands of indigenous removed from traditional farming and food gathering territories. Moving tribes to tropical lowlands brought them into contact with malarial mosquitoes for the first time, which increased mortality rates. This is compounded by the CV-19 risk, with desperate local tribesmen and illegal Indonesian gold miners potentially bringing CV-19 with them [19]. Influx of Indonesian artisanal miners is an added existential threat to Amungme and Komoro with Indonesian authorities encouraging non-indigenous settlement, with the Amungme estimated to be a minority by the year 2020 [7]. Tribes from across the region have exploited and expanded artisanal mining, causing disruption to local communities. Environment damage caused by mining has

Western New Guinea Alpine Glaciers
The tropical Carstenz glacier in the Papua Province (formerly Irian Jaya) is melting; 80% of the collective glacier area was reported lost between 1942 and 2000.

Figure 4 Meren Glacier system (after Prentice and T Kiev).
The West Meren Glacier has receded some 2.6 kilometres since first surveyed in 1936, before melting away completely sometime during the recent period 1997 -1999 alongside the shrinking East Northwall Firn (figure 5). In Papua New Guinea, three ice domes in the Central Cordillera Range disappeared in the 1960s. Whilst, in temperate New Zealand, some 127 glaciers surveyed in the Southern Alps retreated by 38% and lost 25% of their total area since the mid-1850s; however, many of these glaciers have advanced further in recent decades, [13]. According to Thompson et al. (2002) [15], this is likely due to global atmospheric warming as the primary driver, because changes in atmospheric moisture are generally much more localised; hence the growth of some glaciers in localised regions where precipitation has increased [9]. The years 2011 -2015 have been the warmest 5 year period on record, with many extreme weather events influenced by recent climate change. It is not surprising then that the present observed speed of glacier retreat world-wide has been correspondingly increased in the contemporary Anthropocene period. Increased rates of glacial retreat, twice the rate of a decade ago, are reported, although the contribution of manmade human warming cannot be attributed accurately. Additionally, records are almost nonexistent in this region, and there is no long-term baseline of high resolution of satellite imagery to clarify the overall historic picture. However, in the past few years, researchers have noted rapid rises in meltwater and alarming glacial retreat from Greenland, to West Antarctica, and to the Himalayas [20].
Seasonal climate variations on the Puncak Jaya massif are small. Monthly mean temperatures vary below 0.5 ⃘ C during the year, and there appears to be no observable seasonal variation in precipitation, radiation, or cloud cover. Consequently, the net mass-balance of glaciers remains seasonally uniform, and glacier ablation occurs throughout the year below the equilibrium line, with snow accumulation occurring above the equilibrium line. Thus, the snowline elevation on equatorial glaciers should remain near the equilibrium line altitude except for short periods after heavy snow. Mass-balance measurements show an overall reduction over recent decades. The ice extent on the Puncak Jaya massif is small, but the area is one of only a few present-day, ice-covered equatorial regions. The rapid and continuous retreat of glaciers throughout the 20 th Century however, indicates that the mass budget has been consistently negative. This suggests we are in the middle of a warming period of climatic change, of which glaciers are a sensitive indicator. Using a numerical model of glaciers and their dynamics [21], Molg estimated the mass budget change needed to give the observed retreat between 1850 -1972 of over 2 km for Carstensz, and some 3 km for the Meren glaciers respectively. He showed a steady rise of the equilibrium-line elevation at a rate of 80m per century allowing the model to match the observed retreat, with the most likely explanation for the mass-balance change due regional air temperature warming of 0.6 ⃘ C per century, in agreement with work by Thompson etc. al. [14 -15].

The Grasberg mine complex at Tambang Terbuka
The GeoEye Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation with an imagery archive of 300 Million km 2 of map accurate imaging, provided us with imagery over the coordinates of the mine area

Imagery acquisition
The general methodology here uses high resolution satellite imagery to look for changes in acquired images to observe and quantify them. Original research was based on Dr Chris

Image data processing
IKONOS imagery from the GeoEye Foundation archive was provided geometrically rectified for chosen comparative dates, following closely a methodology developed previously for land clearance assessment in Zimbabwe [6,23]. The necessary methodology, shown in figure 5, takes the Digital Number (DN) values recorded by the satellite's imaging sensor, in the chosen satellite bands, and converts these DN values to at sensor spectral radiance [24]. The at sensor spectral radiance is then converted to at sensor apparent reflectance. A further atmospheric correction permits calculation of actual at earth reflectance. The spectral radiance Lλ observed at the sensor aperture can be calculated from the digital number values and using the band calibration coefficients and the bandwidth ℎ values for the satellite bands with the product metadata, by the equation: where at-aperture radiance is equivalent to the exoatmospheric radiance.
From this planetary reflectance may be obtained, defined by the equation: where d is the day-dependent Earth-Sun distance in astronomical units, is the mean solar exoatmospheric spectral irradiance at an Earth-Sun distance of 1 astronomical unit, and is the solar zenith angle.
However, this is an exoatmospheric correction and does not correct for atmospheric effects.
So this correction may be followed by removal of atmospheric effects due to both scattering

Multispectral Land use and land cover change detection analysis
Landsat 7 is a multispectral satellite providing both visible and Near Infra-Red (NIR), used partly in this analysis, as well as Short Wave Infra-Red and thermal imagery, which together are used routinely to characterise urban areas, monitor land cover and land use, or manage change such as forced land clearance [6]. IKONOS 2 is also a multispectral satellite with one metre panchromatic resolution, and four 4 m bands (blue 0. Human rights workers, NGOs, and press representatives, are not interested in radiometric assessment, they only want to see a specific area, with key features, e.g. burned villages, newly built structures, etc., and as such use of non-radiometric assessment is legitimate, determined by user needs, and accuracy. However, in NDVI-related work, as an impact assessment factor for scientific studies of land use and land cover impacting indigenous communities, does require radiometric calibration. Images should be geometrically corrected and co-registered, for images taken on the same date, and those taken on different dates. Any useful climate perspective will require data covering several decades. Calibration provides at surface reflectance to correctly calculate vegetation products. For large area assessment in the analysis we used Matlab software (version 2013b released September 6 th , 2013, The Math Works Inc. Natick, MA USA) chosen for its wide range of digital image processing approaches. Matlab is a numerical computing environment to plot functions and data, as well as implementation of algorithms. Matlab allows wide area assessment of land cover to be achieved quickly and provides for a variety of image based signal processing approaches. In our method we designed a Matlab program to co-register before and after imagery in single or multiple bands, ensuring co-registered orthorectification pixel to pixel on chosen scenes. In the Matlab workspace these elements undergo matrix manipulations. The simplest analysis uses IKONOS NDVI such that after at earth reflectance calculation and atmospheric correction: following the method for calculation of Landsat NDVI, and is more commonly applied to vegetative land cover. NDVI has a Normalized index between modular values of 0 and 1, but is not necessarily radiometrically calibrated and is one of several possible Normalized indices used for vegetation, soil and other common surfaces [30].
As stated previously media outlets, NGOs, and collaborating human rights workers do not require NDVI, they want photographic evidence, and in some cases, driven by user requirements, images may not be at earth reflectance, nor atmosphere corrected. Market assessments might address this issue by advocating for a 'scientific and standardised radiometric approach' but our media users and workers find false colour NDVI confusing.

Satellite imagery of Nearby Tropical Glaciers
Local alpine glaciers, amongst the closest to the Equator:   Some buildings have been partially removed during this period. This land clearance, sadly, is not an isolated incident, but a common problem, documented in recent ESA satellite projects.
ERS-1-SAR data has been used to monitor rain forest "Conversion" and land use planning.
ESA's TRULI project results, (an acronym for Tropical Rainforest and Use of Land Investigation project PP2-D11, commenced 1993), located on Borneo, 450 km upstream of the Mahakam River, set a benchmark for monitoring Indonesian tropical rain forest removal [32]. The West Papuan rainforest is also heavily impacted by illegal logging, which dramatically increased in volume due to an order of 22,653,000 m 3

SUMMARY
We provide the first high resolution visible spectra satellite imagery analysis of the Grasberg region, over a 12 years period in the brief annual June 'acquisition window' for cloud free imagery. However, until researchers are permitted back into this conflicted region, scientists, NGOs, and mountaineering tourists are at risk of attack, delaying ground-work validation of our satellite-based 'biometric' equatorial glacier ablation assessment. Further work will provide a qualitative and quantitative assessment of equatorial glacier NDVI. 'Real-time' global monitoring of such glaciers, on at least an annual basis for remaining endangered glaciers, is vital in the light of the 5 th Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is important for the sake of the local populations to follow up on such high resolution satellite imagery Case Studies to look at mining and environmental issues affecting Papuan tribal communities with another set of high resolution images to address the question of whether these glaciers have at last completely ablated or not. Tropical glaciers should certainly be considered as 'canaries in the cage', sensitive markers responding in near realtime to rapid temperature change trends and as such provide a window to look at consequent environmental impact. Societal change is likely to reflect some of the local environmental changes, such as water scarcity and deforestation, which affect the Papuan Amungme tribe.
We have used these latest technological developments to look at several regions of global concern, and quantify issues where possible. We have focused here on glacial and industrial and artisanal mining impact on the West Papuan Amungme, likely to be compounded when the glacial supply is finally exhausted post-2023.
Comparison of 'before and after' high resolution satellite imagery provides visual evidence of changing land cover in inaccessible regions. Comparison of before and after IKONOS satellite imagery can provide evidence to corroborate altered land use: building removal, addition, and agricultural changes. Manual assessment formerly used to assess Porta Farm, Zimbabwe was time consuming [6]. We now use Matlab software to obtain large area change assessment with suitable algorithms, which provide rapid change assessment, with false colour contrast delineating manmade boundaries, e.g. fields, from natural ones, such as lake edges with various digital filters [6]. A high pass filter can also define built edges in high reflectance imagery. Suitable Matlab spectral and temporal comparisons provide radiometrically calibrated and non-radiometrically calibrated NDVI products to quantify and visualise a range of human rights-related issues.
High resolution satellite imagery provides detailed evidence supporting claims by all parties in disputed territories, isolated mining areas, indigenous tribal lands, and mines under study. By 2023 the probability of pure water scarcity will increase, with expected loss of the remnant East Northwall Firn, and Carstenz glaciers, in addition to mining tailing contamination of available indigenous water supplies.