Land use/land cover change along the Eastern Coast of the UAE and its impact on flooding risk

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the spatiotemporal changes of land use/land cover (LULC) along the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over a 20-year period using an integration of remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems techniques. The impact of land use change on flooding potential was also investigated through hydrologic model simulations. Landsat images of the years 1996, 2006 and 2016 were processed and analyzed. Change detection was carried out to assess changes in the built-up areas. Furthermore, the impact of urbanization on flooding was assessed using a hydrologic model in two major watersheds of Fujairah Emirate. It was observed that for the period 1996-2006 the vegetation and the built-up areas had increased at a rate of 11.23% and 24.56%, respectively. For the period 2006-2016, this expansion more than doubled in terms of the vegetation class (27.51%) and slightly increased for the built-up class (28.98%). The change detection analysis revealed that urbanization has mostly occurred along the coastal boundary. Hydrologic model simulations quantified the role of urbanization in increasing the flooding potential. The increase depends on watershed characteristics and the rate of change in urbanization and the magnitude of the rainfall event. ARTICLE HISTORY

The Impact of Spatiotemporal Changes in Land Development (1984–2019) on the Increase in the Runoff Coefficient in Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

“…Figure 8 shows the evolution of built-up areas from 1984 to 2019. The current study, supported by previous research in this area, demonstrates that increasing urban development in flood plain zones will boost peak discharge, reduce the time to peak, and increase the runoff volume [2,29,[71][72][73][74]. The findings of this study indicate that urbanization resulted in an increased risk of urban flash floods.…”

“…In 1984, 1994 and 2004, built-up areas steadily increased, starting from 30.751 km 2 to 44.283 and then to 55.823, respectively (Figure 5). While in 2014, this amount leaped enormously to about 119.101 km 2 . From 1984 to 2014, the areas of agriculture and vegetation decreased significantly.…”

“…RS imagery has been universally applied in urban expansion and environmental analysis, with a large number of functional and sophisticated strategies being developed [1]. LULC classification plays an essential role in research on the physical and social sciences concerning urbanization and soil mapping [2]. LULC is an essential parameter for detecting human activities and natural changes due to climate change.…”

Coastal Runoff in the United Arab Emirates—The Hazard and Opportunity

“…Soil properties and parameters needed for hydrologic modeling were extracted from the digital soil map of the world [35]. The LULC data were obtained from remote sensing imagery and published studies (e.g., Ahmed [16], Shanableh [42], Hussein [43]).…”

Physically-based, distributed hydrologic model for Makkah watershed using GPM satellite rainfall and ground rainfall stations

“…However, the quality of model inputs such as precipitation significantly influences the accuracy of the hydrologic model predictions (Montanari and Koutsoyiannis 2012). The low spatial and temporal resolutions and low quality of precipitation data are considered to be major challenges in many regions across the globe, including the Arabian Peninsula (Hussein et al 2020). The high quality, highresolution global satellite precipitation products that recently became available can fill this gap and provide accurate input for many applications, including water resources planning and management, hydrologic modeling and forecasting, design of hydraulic structures, and flood, drought, and landslide analysis and forecasting (Sharif et al 2017;Alsumaiti et al 2020).…”