Analysis of the Relationship among Flood Severity, Precipitation, and Deforestation in the Tonle Sap Lake Area, Cambodia Using Multi-Sensor Approach

Cambodia is the 9 th country in the world to be vulnerable to natural disasters in 2011, especially due to the storm and flood. Also, it is worrisome that there is a rapid deforestation in Cambodia, which can be abundant and accelerate the increase in damage. Nevertheless, only few research has been studied to establish the relationship between deforestation and flood damage in Cambodia. In this study, several remote sensing techniques were applied to reveal the relationship among the water level change, changing patterns of precipitation, and deforestation in Cambodia. In addition, the trends of precipitation and deforestation were identified and the impact of them on future flood risk was analyzed using Monte Carlo simulations. We could find a high correlation between water level change and precipitation and predict how high the flood risk in Cambodia would increase if rainfall continued. However, a significant relationship between deforestation and increased flood risk was not identified.