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Monitoring and evaluation of desertification and land degradation processes on northwestern coast Egyptian territories


Arts & Humanities Open Access Journal
A. Gad, A. M. Ayman, R. Mansour

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Abstract

The submitted research activities and outcomes include assessing and mapping the environmental sensitivity and desertification of the northwestern coast of the Arab Republic of Egypt Located in the hyper-arid climatic zone. The desert (96% of Egyptian territories) is characterized by its abundance of natural resources, such as arable land, pastureland, economic minerals and wild animals and plants.

Egypt suffers from an increase in population density in the Nile Delta and Valley, necessitating the establishment of new, integrated urban communities in desert areas. The priority given to Egypt’s northwestern coast is clear, given its history as a geographical extension of the Western Desert. It is one of the most important development areas, as it is one of the regions recorded in history as a granary during Roman civilization. This is due to its abundant groundwater resources and natural biodiversity, along with the adaptation of its inhabitants to these unique environmental conditions. 
Land use/ cover were mapped, on bases of multi-temporal satellite images (Landsat TM 2004 and sentinel 2018), applying several contrast-stretching processes. Rectification of the scenes studied was performed using enough GCP’s, distributed randomly all over the images. The studies revealed that northwestern coast represents productive and adaptive biodiversity areas in Egyptian Western Desert. Environmental sensitivity leads to the coastal sand dunes formation and encroachment, which leads to the intrusion of salty seawater into lands with highly porous sandy soils, leading to salinization and waterlogging of the lands, leading to a reduction in the productivity of these areas. It could be concluded that developing a quantitative model of concept will identify the sensitivity factors, which supports decision-making for sustainable development.

Keywords

assessing, mapping, Environmental sensitivity, desertification, northwestern coast, Egypt

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