Utilization of multi‐dates LANDSAT_TM data to detect and quantify the environmental damages in the southeastern region of Kuwait from 1990 to 1991

Abstract

The invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces in August 1990, has affected the environment of the Gulf region and of Kuwait in particular. The environmental consequences of military operations and burning of oil wells in 1991 severely affected the air and the marine environment in addition to the terrestrial ecosystems in Kuwait. The air environment received hundreds of thousands of tons of oil soot, carbon oxides and sulphur oxides per day during the crises. The marine and coastal ecosystems were seriously affected by the gushed and drainage of oil onto the Gulf water. The terrestrial ecosystems of Kuwait were severely affected by the drainage of oil that formed networks of oil rivers and lakes. It was also affected by oil soot as well as troops operations. The penetration and solidification of oil with surface sediments led to the formation of new surface layer known as ‘Tarcrete’. This paper aims at utilizing multi‐dates LANDSAT‐TM data to detect and quantify the environmental damages that happened in the terrestrial environment of the southeastern region of Kuwait owing to the Iraqi invasion between 1990 and 1991. The LANDSAT‐TM images (165/40) acquired in 1990 and 1991 were selected to carry out this study. The two images were geometrically corrected and enhanced before extracting the subset for the study area, using ERDAS Imagine S/W. The principal components of two dates were also produced and interpreted. Then, the multi‐dates enhancement technique of change detection was applied on the resultant principal component images (PC) of the two subsets of December 1990 and November 1991. Finally, the detected environmental damages from the previous step were quantified using the supervised classification technique. The total terrestrial environment of the study area is calculated to be 5240 km2. The environmental changes are calculated to be 67.7%. The severe and high environmental damages represent 18.7%. These damages represent the new layer of ‘Tarcrete’ and oil rivers and lakes in the form of a black plume, starting from Magwa, Burgan and Ahmadi oil fields and extending in the southeast direction, parallel to the shoreline until the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The moderate environmental changes, in the form of heavy oil soot, represent 18.8% whereas the minor changes, in the form of low density of oil soot, represent 30.2% of the study area. Thus, the Kuwaiti environment has suffered from severe environmental damages as a result of the second Gulf war disaster.