2024-05-04

Soil erosion is a main cause of land degradation, adveresly impacting soil health, soil fertility, and soil carbon. This study used the revised universal soil loss equation (RUSLE) model and geoinformatics tools to predict soil erosion rates in the Duhok governorate, located in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The RUSLE model integrates several to predict annual soil loss: soil erodibility factor (K), rainfall erosivity factor (R), slope (L), slope steepness factor (S), land use/cover factor (C), and conservation methods (P). Information layers for these variables were created using ArcGIS 10.3, showing the extent of soil erosion. Additionally, we identified and prioritized erosion hotspots to implement conservation practices. The results showed that approximately 78% of the study area experienced very low and low levels of soil erosion, whereas only 4 and 7% were subject to high and very high erosion rates, respectively. The findings also emphasized the significance of slope and land-use interactions in accelerating soil erosion, particularly in agricultural areas characterized by steep slopes.

2024-05-04

Land deterioration, drought, desertification, and water resources shrinkage threaten natural resources, negatively impacting environmental, economic, and political stability. The increasing occurrence of climate change (extremes) impacts land degradation processes, soil erosion by water and wind, and salinization. The researchers have invested several years of scientific research in natural resources deterioration, including soil degradation and erosion, land degradation, desertification, and climate changes, which are interesting enough. However, the link between science and policymaking appears to be less active as serious actions do not take fast. The eighteen chapters of this book focus more on topics related to natural resources deterioration, such as land degradation, desertification, drought, climate change, and analysis of numerous case studies. This book presents experts' overviews, study results, experiences, and knowledge of natural resources deterioration in MENA countries. It attracts researchers, experts, scholars, scientists, academics, students, practitioners, graduates, or anybody interested in land degradation, desertification, climate change, and natural hazards that fall within natural resources deterioration. Therefore, researchers keep continuing to do their investigations and produce results that convince stakeholders and policymaking to act immediately towards protecting natural resources and their sustainability.

2022-11-02

The combination of GIS and multicriteria decision analysis approach was applied for assessment of land degradation vulnerability in Zakho District in Kurdistan Region of Iraq. First, a literature review was conducted to select effective parameters related to land degradation vulnerability. Three main groups of parameters, including physical, chemical, and socio-economic, were defined as effective criteria. The selected parameters were land use/land cover, slope, soil erosion rate, soil salinity, soil sodicity, soil organic carbon, soil acidity, and population density. The data were acquired from several sources, and the maps of the parameters were created in ArcGIS 10.3 version. The maps were standardized and adjusted in similar units and then aggregated using a weighted overlay method to show the spatial pattern of land degradation risk in the study area. The result indicated that only 7% be susceptible in the study area, while 50 and 43% were categorized as low and moderate levels, respectively. The land degradation risk is mainly due to natural factors such as slope and soil erosion. The result of this research could be useful for national organizations and agencies for sustainable land use planning and land management.

2022-11-02

Land degradation is one of the leading environmental problems in the world. It defines as any change in the original condition of the land that may affect soil productivity, including topsoil erosion, the loss of vegetation, and salinity. In this chapter, we discussed the main factors affecting land degradation and soil erosion. At first, land degradation sources fell into two main categories: natural and anthropogenic. Among, anthropogenic sources with greater effects on land degradation were more noted. The main anthropogenic sources which have been discussed are agricultural activities, soil salinity, building and infrastructure, culture, economic situation, environmental pollution, and war.

2019-08-30

Historical and current status of the land is essential for efficient environmental management. This can especially be noticed in regions that are vitally affected by climate variability and human activities such as Zakho district, Kurdistan Region-Iraq. The information and status of land use/cover (LULC) help to design an efficient and sustainable environmental management program. The present study illustrates the spatiotemporal dynamics of LULC in Zakho district, Iraq. Landsat satellite imageries of two different time periods, i.e., Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) of 1989 and Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) of 2017 were acquired and the changes in Zakho over a period of 28 years were quantified. Supervised classification methodology has been employed using Maximum Likelihood Algorithm. The images were categorized into eight different classes namely dense forest, sparse forest, grass, rock, soil, crop, built-up and water body. The results showed that during the last 28 years, build-up land had been increased from 9 km2 in 1989 to 49 km2 in 2017. Crops and rocks lands have been increased as well by about 102.1 and 15.39 km2, respectively. Moreover, a very slight increase has been observed in water body and soil by about 3.5 and 0.98 km2, respectively. On the other hand, dense forest, spare forest, and grass lands have been decreased by 92.83, 14.26, and 53.68 km2, respectively. This chapter concluded that a major change in Zakho district land happened in a negative trend regarding the natural environment.

2018-10-19

Monitoring and mapping of urban trees are essential to provide urban forestry authorities with timely and consistent information. Modern techniques increasingly facilitate these tasks, but require the development of semi-automatic tree detection and classification methods. In this article, we propose an approach to delineate and map the crown of 15 tree species in the city of Duhok, Kurdistan Region of Iraq using WorldView-2 (WV-2) imagery. A tree crown object is identified first and is subsequently delineated as an image object (IO) using vegetation indices and texture measurements. Next, three classification methods: Maximum Likelihood, Neural Network, and Support Vector Machine were used to classify IOs using selected IO features. The best results are obtained with Support Vector Machine classification that gives the best map of urban tree species in Duhok. The overall accuracy was between 60.93% to 88.92% and κ-coefficient was between 0.57 to 0.75. We conclude that fifteen tree species were identified and mapped at a satisfactory accuracy in urban areas of this study.