No abstract

Developing a site history and ecological site description is one of the critical steps in restoration planning for arid landscapes. This study focuses on Umm Nigga, Northeast of Kuwait, which was damaged by various human activities. The northern portion of Umm Nigga falls within the boundaries of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) adjacent to Iraq, and was fenced off to restrict public access since 1994. The central objective of this project was to use remote sensing, field assessment, and Geographical Information System (GIS) spatial data to develop a site history for restoration planning of Umm Nigga. Field observation and GIS analysis indicated that the landscape could be divided into three units along a gradient ranging from the coast to inland locations, based on geology, soil properties, and dominant vegetation. Reference sites in the DMZ were also matched for each unit. Remote sensing was used to compare vegetation cover between damaged and reference sites at selected units. Results showed that vegetation cover increased in the unfenced damaged site after the 1991 Gulf War from 2% in 1988 to 37% in 1998, but then it decreased to 23% in 2013. In the DMZ reference site, the vegetation cover also increased from 0% in 1988 to 40% in 1998, but it continued increasing through 2013 to 64%. We conclude that overgrazing and destructive camping are the major source of disturbance in the damaged areas.

The world's largest hydrocarbon disturbance occurred in the deserts and offshore waters of Kuwait during the Second Gulf War in 1990–1991. In this research, remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) techniques were utilized to explore how native desert vegetation has recovered from hydrocarbon contamination after the Second Gulf War. By using RS techniques, change detection analysis was conducted to understand the changes about the coverage and extent of the total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) contamination and vegetation recovery. These changes were traced from 1991 until the hydrocarbon was no longer visible on the ground surface in 1998. GIS spatial analysis was conducted to determine the major ecosystem factors that influenced the vegetation recovery along with the removal of hydrocarbon disturbance. According to the results, autogenic recovery occurred at both sites within a few years and that desert native vegetation was found to have the ability to adapt and recover from hydrocarbon pollution. Native vegetation recovered across 31% of the TPH‐contaminated areas at Umm Gudair and 34% at Wadi Al Batin. The changes in TPH contamination were significantly correlated with the soil type, vegetation type, geological substrates, geomorphological features, and annual precipitation. The vegetation recovery of dominant desert communities in the study area was influenced by soil type, geomorphological feature, and TPH‐contaminated areas. Interestingly, the results showed that these desert communities can recover in areas contaminated by TPH at a higher rate than noncontaminated sites in the study area. Such a study can provide important inputs to the restoration and revegetation programs in arid landscapes.

The primary aim of this project was to assess vegetation changes in the Sabah Al‐Ahmad Nature Reserve, Kuwait, which is a war‐affected area following the Iraqi invasion in 1990. After the liberation in 1991, several portions of the reserve were under a restoration program. Remote sensing has been used as a tool to assess vegetation and land cover changes. We studied the feasibility of three common methods—the Mahalanobis distance (MD), maximum likelihood (ML), and support vector machine (SVM)—for classification of the multispectral imagery (Landsat) and hyperspectral (Hyperion). The reserve was also compared to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) located at Umm Nigga at the northern border of Kuwait, as it had recovered naturally, to distinguish between an autogenic recovery and a restored area. We discovered that the location was damaged during the military occupation, but a rapid recovery of the vegetation was then recorded in the reserve after the war from less than 1% measured in 1991 to 42% in 1998. Then, the vegetation cover significantly decreased in 2002 (26%) and slightly increased in 2013 (28%). We found that similar rapid increase in vegetation cover occurred in most parts of the reserve that was under the restoration program, and in the DMZ, which was naturally recovered. We concluded that remote sensing technologies are helpful tools in understanding the process of vegetation recovery as it provides information on location and timing of recovery, particularly where optimal condition exists.