Coastal vulnerability assessment is the key to coastal management and sustainable development. Sea level rise (SLR) and anthropogenic activities have triggered more extreme climatic events and made the coastal region vulnerable in recent decades. Many parts of the world also noticed increased sediment deposition, tidal effects, and changes in the shoreline. Farasan Island, located in the south-eastern part of Saudi Arabia, experienced changes in sediment deposition from the Red Sea in recent years. This study used Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) to delineate the shoreline changes of Farasan Island during 1975–2020. Multi-temporal Landsat data and DSAS were used for shoreline calculation based on endpoint rate (EPR) and linear regression. Results revealed an increase in vegetation area on the island by 17.18 km2 during 1975–1989 and then a decrease by 69.85 km2 during 1990–2020. The built-up land increased by 5.69 km2 over the study period to accommodate the population growth. The annual temperature showed an increase at a rate of 0.196 °C/year. The sea-level rise caused a shift in the island's shoreline and caused a reduction of land by 80.86 km2 during 1975–2020. The highly influenced areas by the environmental changes were the north, central, northwest, southwest, and northeast parts of the island. Urban expansion and sea-level rise gradually influence the island ecosystem, which needs proper attention, management, policies, and awareness planning to protect the environment of Farasan Island. Also, the study’s findings could help develop new strategies and plan climate change adaptation.
This research studied the effect geographic constraints of students' daily journey to King Saud University (KSU) on their learning achievement, their participation in extracurricular activities, and their visit of the university library. The data was collected from a random sample of KSU students that consisted of 854 students via an online survey during the academic year 2016. The technologies of geographic information systems have been employed to build a spatial model to measure the distance and taken time for the daily student drive from their houses to the university. 30% of the students’ houses are at a 20 km distance from KSU, 35% of the students need about 40 minutes to arrive at the university, and 8% who need about one hour to arrive. Since Riyadh is urbanized, high in population density, and has a lot of traffic, theses distances and time students spend in their daily drives to the university are causing stress and exhaustion and affect students' academic achievement. 68.42% of students indicated that the location of their homes affects their learning achievement and 63.95% answered that it affects their attendance of activities in the university. Regarding visiting the library, about 58.16 responded that location of their homes affects library visits. The study clarified that there is a negative correlation between the students’ delay times and their academic rate, in other words as the delay times increase, students GPAs decline and subsequently, their academic achievement is less. Finally, the study suggested to specifying and rescheduling the work times for employees and students in Riyadh to reduce the daily drive times, the environmental pollution, and economic depreciation and help increase students' academic achievement by delaying the official working hours for Higher Education institutions by an hour; to start at 9.00 a.m. instead 8.00 a.m. as is currently the case.
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