Assessment of Palm Jumeirah Island’s Construction Effects on the Surrounding Water Quality and Surface Temperatures during 2001–2020

Abstract

Climate change stressors like rising and warmer seas, increased storms and droughts, and acidifying oceans are rapidly threatening coastal zones, which are the world’s most densely inhabited places. This research assesses the effects of Palm Jumeirah Island (PJI) construction on its surrounding water quality and temperature, using Landsat-7 and 8 spectral and thermal bands for the years 2001, 2014, 2016, 2019, and 2020. To aid in this goal, the changes in water spectral reflectance was observed and interpreted, based on previous research and measurements, to discover the correlation between water quality and its spectral reflectance. Then, the sea surface temperature (SST) was calculated for the years under review and changes in water temperature were evaluated. Finally, the Green Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (GNDVI) and the Normalized Difference Turbidity Index (NDTI) were calculated to estimate water chlorophyll levels and water turbidity, respectively, and changes were observed and interpreted for the time period under review. The present study showed that the PJI construction not only increased the water reflectance in the 0.5–0.8 µm of wavelength, which can be considered to be the increase of suspended sediments and chlorophyll but the water temperature also increased by 7.5 °C during the 19 years. In addition, a gradual increase in the values of GNDVI (by 0.097–0.129) and NDTI (by 0.118~0.172) were observed. A drop in chlorophyll and suspended sediment spectral reflectance and GNDVI and NDTI values were also observed in 2020 compared to 2019 which can be attributed to the 63 to 82% decrease in tourists in Dubai in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to draw attention to environmental issues by clarifying the effect of creating artificial islands in the sea and our analysis and results are a suitable reference for specialized hydrological and environmental studies based on spectral information and distance measurements, as presented in this paper.

Water induced surface erosion risk assessment in Jumar agricultural watershed, Jharkhand, India using multivariate statistics and GIS

“…In this study, the two-year seasonal analysis of the pre-monsoon and the post-monsoon periods showed a trend of increased turbidity in the post-monsoon months of both years (Mansourmoghaddam et al, 2022). The turbidity in the pre-monsoon months is lower compared to post-monsoon months for both years of 2020-2021 (Table 6).…”

“…The spectral indices such as moisture stress index (MSI), normalised difference turbidity index (NDTI), normalised difference moisture index (NDMI) help in understanding the influence of vegetation cover and rainfall in the area (Bera, 2018;Bid & Siddique, 2019;Taloor et al, 2021). NDTI can clearly show the sediment influx in waterbody geospatially (Mansourmoghaddam et al, 2022). The soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) and Bare soil Index (BSI) show the area of barren soil and vegetation cover.…”

“…Excessive turbidity affects the vision underwater and prohibits the light to reach the sediment bed, thus creating havoc for aquatic flora and fauna (Garg et al, 2017;Mansourmoghaddam et al, 2022). pH high (>8.5) and low (<6.5) are not suitable for drinking or preferred for irrigation purposes.…”

Analysis of the recent trends in vegetation dynamics and its relationship with climatological factors using remote sensing data for Caspian Sea watersheds in Iran

“…NDVI is an index which is very commonly used to investigate the status of vegetation. In order to measure NDVI factors such as the leaf area index (LAI) and the production pattern (Dutta et al, 2015), which is based on vegetation class, land use/land cover changes (Fonge et al, 2019), water stress, vegetation phenology, continental land cover mapping, and chlorophyll content (Geerken et al, 2005;Martínez and Gilabert, 2009;Moulin et al, 1997;Dhar et al, 2020;Mansourmoghaddam et al, 2022a) are usually used. In recent times, satellite data have been more and more often used to link vegetation indices to climatic elements (Roerink et al, 2003;Jelínek et al, 2020).…”

Remote sensing analysis to map inter-regional spatio-temporal variations of the vegetation in Iceland during 2001–2018

“…Erupting volcanoes produce lava flows and ash deposits, which dramatically transform landscapes. Despite the low population density (3.1 inhabitants/km 2 in 2010), it's the human influence that affects most of the countryside (Jóhannesson 2010) and its water surrounding (Mansourmoghaddam et al 2022). Within an Icelandic context, understanding biodiversity is of special importance, as Iceland has a landscape history of which has been characterized by frequent, energetic geological processes (Thorarinsson 1967) and pressure on its ecosystems due to the land-use changes imposed after Iceland was settled by humans (Dugmore et al 2009;Sigurmundsson et al 2014;Bates et al 2021).…”