Floods and flood management and its socio-economic impact on Pakistan: A review of the empirical literature

Flood is one of the most damaging natural disasters as the recent floods have shown their serious impact on Pakistan. Flood control and regulation policies are essential to reduce the risks of economic downturn, a threat to human existence, and to sustain the ecology. The severity of flood catastrophe activities represents a constant and severe issue in the world. Floods are rising year by year in severity and duration, causing negative impacts on the social and economic conditions of the nation concerned. While the frequency of floods cannot be avoided, their adverse impacts can be considerably reduced by adopting careful planning and efficient training. This paper reviews the socioeconomic impact of floods, and the existing condition of flood control policies outlines the flood protection problems and discusses opportunities for successful and efficient flood control in Pakistan. The paper also intends to propose several suggestions for efficient and sustainable flood control in Pakistan

Delineation of Groundwater Potential Area using an AHP, Remote Sensing, and GIS Techniques in the Ifni Basin, Western Anti-Atlas, Morocco

An assessment of potential groundwater areas in the Ifni basin, located in the western AntiAtlas range of Morocco, was conducted based on a multicriteria analytical approach that integrated a set of geomorphological and hydroclimatic factors influencing the availability of this resource. This approach involved the use of geographic information systems (GIS) and hierarchical analytical process (AHP) models. Different factors were classified and weighted according to their contribution to and impact on groundwater reserves. Their normalized weights were evaluated using a pairwise comparison matrix. Four classes of potentiality emerged: very high, high, moderate, and low, occupying 15.22%, 20.17%, 30.96%, and 33.65%, respectively, of the basin’s area. A groundwater potential map (GWPA) was validated by comparison with data from 134 existing water points using a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The AUC was calculated at 80%, indicating the good predictive accuracy of the AHP method. These results will enable water operators to select favorable sites with a high groundwater potential

Rock Art Conservation and Geotourism: A practical example from Foum Chenna engravings site, Morocco

The rock engravings, the subject of this article, are artistic representations made by people from cultural communities who no longer exist. The rock art was a way of expressing their thoughts, culture and beliefs, before the invention of writing. The engravings represent an archive of an ancient civilization which developed over thousands of years throughout North Africa, from the Atlantic to Egypt and from the Atlas Mountains to the Sahel. Morocco has more than 300 listed rock art sites, scattered throughout the country. Foum Chenna is a major site in the Anti-Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco. The engravings were predominantly made by pecking out images of human figures, animals and patterns, and the area today is the center of interest for the recently-formed Association of Rock Art Heritage of Southern Morocco, based in Zagora. Foum Chenna is a place of primary importance with more than 800 schematic engravings made using the pecked technique, a characteristic of this period. The majority of engravings which depict riders associated with zoomorphic and anthropomorphic representations, also, importantly, the numerous rock inscriptions recounting a scriptural tradition and reflecting the historical beginnings of Libyan writing, were today revitalized to transcribe the Tamazight language. The need to study and protect this heritage should not be limited to the preserve of just a few specialists. Knowledge of it can be used, with care, for sustainable human development. The rock art and other featuresmay make the region worthy of international recognition by UNESCO. In this paper, we look at Foum Chenna site from the perspective of geotourism and importance of the site for geoeducation, and the value of Foum Chenna site as geosite. Besides, soils, considered as some of the extraordinary manifestations of the culture of the Foum Chenna, are of huge scientific importance

Furthering the precision of RUSLE soil erosion with PSInSAR data: an innovative model

Soil erosion is a severe environmental problem worldwide, especially in tropical regions. The Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), one of the universally accepted empirical soil erosion models, is quite commonly used in tropical climatic conditions to estimate the magnitude and severity of soil erosion. This study, apart from identifying the role of individual parameters in influencing the results of the RUSLE, also aims at refining the RUSLE results by incorporating the state-of-the-art technique Persistent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PSInSAR) in a GIS environment by utilizing its ability to measure minute surface changes in millimetre levels. Apart from this novel approach of prioritising soil erosion classes using PSInSAR, the eroding surface conditions were also studied using low coherence value (\u3c0.75 in this study). The spatially and temporally averaged annual soil loss and net soil erosion (2015–2019), derived through RUSLE and transport limited sediment delivery (TLSD) approach, respectively, was improved by spatially integrating the PSInSAR velocity map. The integrated methodological framework is demonstrated for a tropical river basin in South India (Muvattupuzha River Basin [MRB]), which shows a mean rate of net soil loss of 6.8 ton/ha/yr, and nearly 8% of the area experiences deposition. Our approach to improve the accuracy of RUSLE-based soil erosion classes using PSInSAR techniques clearly demarcated the areas that call for utmost priority in implementing management practices. The corollary results show that the very severe soil erosion class is characterized by PSI velocity with higher negative values, followed by the successively lower classes. Results strongly suggest that RUSLE output can be improved as well as validated using a velocity map derived from radar data

Assessment of soil erosion risk in a semi-arid climate watershed using SWAT model: case of Tata basin, South-East of Morocco

Increased sedimentation is the main problem that affects dam efficiency by reducing storage capacity. Planning for dam construction and maintenance requires design strategies that heavily depend on integrated basin models, properly identifying principal sediment origins within the watershed and qualifying the sediment production rate. In this research work, the physically-based watershed SWAT model, defined as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool, was used to estimate the rate of sediment production for future dams in the Tata basin, located in southeast Morocco. The model was calibrated and tested for uncertainty by the employment of the algorithm Sequential Uncertainty Fitting-2. The outputs were used for assessing critical sediment source areas. Calibration and validation of the model were performed by monthly data. The values for Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient, Percent bias coefficient and determination coefficient (R2), respectively, during the calibration period 1990–1998 (0.96, −13% and 0.96) and the validation period 1999–2006 (0.77, + 11% and 0.93) indicate the accordance with the results obtained for the measured flow and the simulated flow values. The annual sediment yield of the Tata basin extends from 0 to 11 t/ha/y with a mean of 2.3 t/ha/y. The spatial distribution of these sediments varies from upstream to downstream. The downstream basin generated more sediment to the river per unit area, though it was less than the total amount of the basin for the upstream area. This variation is influenced by the increased downstream surface runoff and also by other characteristics of the basin such as slope and lithology. The low erosion places correspond to areas with lithological formations that are more resistant to erosion