Human and Nature Effects Detection on the Environmental Properties of Archaeological Historic Cairo City in Egypt Based on Space and Ground Remote Sensing Data
The historic city of Cairo in Egypt (one of the UNESCO regions) has many archaeological sites, making it one of the most famous heritage cities worldwide. Most of these sites are threatened by various risks resulting from many factors, both natural (e.g., flooding events, high temperatures, and land...
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Ubiquity Press
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://account.journal.caa-international.org/index.php/up-j-jcaa/article/view/177 |
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| Summary: | The historic city of Cairo in Egypt (one of the UNESCO regions) has many archaeological sites, making it one of the most famous heritage cities worldwide. Most of these sites are threatened by various risks resulting from many factors, both natural (e.g., flooding events, high temperatures, and land subsidence phenomena) and anthropogenic (e.g., rapid random urbanization process). These factors played a major role in increasing the groundwater level beneath these sites, causing serious damage to them. This article aims to monitor and mitigate the geo-hazard that threatens the heritage sites of Historical Cairo using the integration between space data and in situ measurements. In this study, optical satellite images of Corona, Orbview-3, and Landsat 8, in addition to the Google Earth images, were used to detect land use change values and their reflection on the land surface temperature (LST) levels in the study area. Radar SRTM, Sentinel-1 GRD, and SLC data were used to detect the impacts of flooding events and land subsidence phenomena on the groundwater level around the archaeological sites in the study area. The Syscal PRO geophysical equipment was used to show the groundwater elevation in two regions in the study area. The results of this study showed that the urban changes in the study area were enormous, as the built-up areas amounted to about 16.4 km2, 26.43 km2, and 33.27 km2 in the years 1965, 2004, and 2015, respectively. This process significantly affected the surface topography of the study area, as an area of about 16.84 km2 suffered from land subsidence. The results also showed that many archaeological sites in the study area were affected by a flood event that happened in October 2019. The final results of this study showed that land subsidence and flash floods increased the groundwater level under many heritage sites in the study area. The enormous build-up process caused a high temperature, which was the main reason for an increased rate of evaporation. This evaporation led to salinity on damp archaeological walls affected by high groundwater levels. This study proved that recent developments in remote sensing (RS) tools can help decision makers detect, evaluate, and mitigate environmental risks that threaten irreplaceable sites such as archaeological sites. |
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| ISSN: | 2514-8362 |