How land use change can improve air quality status over Kuwait

Abstract

Due to the frequent urban air pollution episodes over Kuwait recently, decision-makers and government agencies are struggling for sustainable strategies to optimize urban land use and land cover change (LUCC) and improve air quality. This article is targeting to identify the underlying relationships between dust concentration variations and LUCC, using the numerical modelling approach. The RegCM4 and WRF-CHEM models were employed to explore the impacts of land use change over Kuwait to be Evergreen Broad-leaf instead of Desert. Results reveal that both models performed good estimate in two severe dust storm cases, as they detected these cases with reasonable concentrations compared to the reanalysis data with positive correlation, and the overall mean dust concentrations in the target area declined by approximately 6–50% using RegCM4 and 25% with WRF in both dust episodes. Besides, the LUCC affected the wind directions around the area of LUCC; however, it had no impact on the wind’s strength. These results suggested that LUCC caused by an increase in long trees might be an important factor for the PM10 concentration reduction in Kuwait and would need to be investigated over a longer period.