Date of Award

8-2014

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Geosciences

First Advisor

Dr. Mohamed Sultan

Second Advisor

Dr. Ronald Chase

Third Advisor

Dr. William Sauck

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Eugene Yan

Keywords

Remote sensing, hydrology, GIS, Saudi Arabia, climate change, landslides

Abstract

An integrated approach (remote sensing, geographical information systems [GIS], and modeling) was applied to conduct a number of hydrologic and environmental investigations in the Arabian Peninsula (AP) aimed at: (1) identifying the spatial and temporal climate change–related variations in precipitation over the AP using readily available, remotely acquired global precipitation data sets; (2) investigating the nature of the factors controlling the observed climatic variations; (3) estimating the partitioning of precipitation over the Red Sea Hills watersheds into runoff , recharge, and initial losses using calibrated continuous rainfall runoff models (Soil Water Assessment Tool [SWAT]); (4) identifying landslide (largely caused by excessive precipitation) types, distributions, and controlling factors in the Faifa area, along the Red Sea Hills; (5) generating susceptibility maps depicting debris flows within ephemeral valleys (Type I), applying linear relationships between normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and threshold slope values (30°); (6) generating susceptibility maps depicting landslides caused by failure along fracture planes (Type II) (on these maps, a landslide is predicted if fracture planes had strike values similar to [within 20° of] those of the slope face strike and dip angles exceeding the friction, but not the slope angles); and (7) verifying the adopted methodologies by comparing the predicted and observed debris flows (success rate: 82%).

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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