1 Evaluation of Revegetation Progress and Erosion-Prone Areas along Oil and Gas Pipelines in Azerbaijan Emil Bayramov a a British Petroleum (BP), Izmir 9/24, AZ1065 Baku, Azerbaijan, emil.bayramov@yahoo.com Abstract 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. Keywords: NDVI, vegetation cover, linear regression, quantification, USLE 1. Introduction The construction of Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline and South-Caucasus (SCP) gas pipeline started in 2003 and were completed in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The Azerbaijan section of these pipelines is 442 km long and 44 m wide corridor. The 44 m wide corridor of pipelines is defined as the On Right-of-Way (On-RoW), and the non- disturbed areas adjacent to this corridor are Off-Right-of-Way (Off-RoW). After the completion of construction, a minimum of 70% ground cover vegetation had to be restored. Where the original cover was less than 70%, the requirement was 70% of the original cover and another environmental requirement is that VC should reach the same level of adjacent non-disturbed VC outside the 44m corridor – Off-RoW (BP 2006). According to the bio-engineering standards adapted from Zachar (1982), it is recommended to restore 70% of VC to reduce the soil loss to 10t/ha what will prevent from severe erosion (Hann et al. 2006). Since revegetation is a gradual process, erosion control measures must be performed simultaneously because even moderate erosion is sufficient to delay or prevent the growth of vegetation (Hann et al. 2004). 7th Pipeline Technology Conference 2012