9th Pipeline Technology Conference

The construction of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil and South Caucasus Gas (SCP) pipelines was completed in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The Azerbaijan section of BTC Oil and SCP Gas pipelines is 442 km long and 44 m wide corridor named as the Right-of-Way (RoW). BTC and SCP pipelines are aligned parallel to each other within RoW. The construction process significantly disturbed vegetation and soil cover along RoW of pipelines. The revegetation and erosion control measures were conducted after the completion of construction to restore disturbed footprints of construction.

The general goals of the present studies, dedicated to the environmental monitoring and erosion control measures were to evaluate the status of the revegetation in 2007 since the completion of the construction activities and to determine erosion prone areas along RoW.

Quantitative assessment of vegetation cover (VC) was based on the regression and RMSE analysis using IKONOS NDVI 2007 and in-situ estimation of VC percentage for the normalization of NDVI to VC. The prediction of erosion - prone areas was based on the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE). The prediction reliability of USLE was evaluated using in-situ collected erosion occurrences.