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Average value of each ESAI Component from October 1983 to September 1996. Average value of each ESAI Component from October 1983 to September 1996.
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![Table 4 . Types of ESAs and the classes of ESAs index [51].](publication/330034305/figure/tbl1/AS:710098225733632@1546312018193/Types-of-ESAs-and-the-classes-of-ESAs-index-51_Q320.jpg)
The degradation of natural resources at an intense rate creates serious problems in the environmental systems particularly with the compounding effects of climatic vagaries and changes. On the one hand, desertification is a crucial universal, mostly an anthropogenic environmental issue affecting soils all over the world. On the other hand, drought...
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Context 1
... accordance to the classification of the index, eight categories are presented starting from the areas that are susceptible to desertification, potentially sensitive (F1, F2 and F3) and, finally, the critical areas (C1, C2 and C3), which cannot be restored (especially class C3) [37]. Figure 4 presents the pertinent average values of the ESAI components during the period of October 1983 to September 1996. ...
Context 2
... accordance to the classification of the index, eight categories are presented starting from the areas that are susceptible to desertification, potentially sensitive (F1, F2 and F3) and, finally, the critical areas (C1, C2 and C3), which cannot be restored (especially class C3) [37]. Figure 4 presents the pertinent average values of the ESAI components during the period of October 1983 to September 1996. ...
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Citations
... This phenomenon degrades large areas of land, thus reducing agricultural production. Desertification is seriously threatening Greece [25]. It is estimated, in particular, that 30% of agricultural land has already been deserted and that the remaining 49% faces a risk of desertification [26]. ...
The wide acceptance that Climate Change (CC) is a reality, often taking extreme forms, has led to the development of strategies to mitigate climate change and the need to adapt to the new climate conditions. Greece has already developed a National Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change (NSACC), which has started to be implemented in 2016 in the 13 regions of the state by implementing relevant projects. The Primary Sector of Agriculture (PSA) is one of the most vulnerable sectors to CC in Greece. This analysis describes the main points of the national strategy for mitigation and adaptation, focusing on the adaptation strategy for the PSA. Most of the information included in the analysis comes from a multidisciplinary study organized by the Bank of Greece (BoG), which was used as a guide for the formulation of the NSACC. The analysis includes a comprehensive summary of the PSA adaptation policy to CC, an assessment of climate evolution in Greece with emphasis on the characteristics related to the PSA, estimations of the CC impact on plant and animal production, and the whole organization of the national effort for adaptation to CC. The entire organization of the work followed the framework of the BoG study and the methodologies used in this paper.
... Water is a natural resource and often a scarce one Tsesmelis et al., 2019;. The importance of water has been recognized since the time of early societies. ...
Climate change is linked to the increase of natural disasters occurrence over the world. The increasing frequency of wildfire events constitutes a threat toward ecology, economy, and human lives. Hence, accurate information extracted from detailed burnt area cartography plays a primary role in the ecosystems’ preparation. Geoinformation has enabled rapid and low-cost Earth Observation data acquisition and their processing in cloud-based platforms such as Google Earth Engine (GEE). In the present study, a GEE-based approach that exploits machine learning (ML) techniques and ESA’s Sentinel-2 imagery is developed with the purpose of automating the mapping of burnt areas. As a case study is used an area located in the outskirts of Athens in Greece, on which it was occurred one of the largest wildfires in the summer of 2021. A Sentinel-2 image, obtained from GEE immediately after the fire event, was combined with ML classifiers for the purpose of mapping the burnt area at the fire-affected site. Validation of the derived products was based on the error matrix and the Copernicus Rapid Mapping operational product available for this fire event. Our study results clearly demonstrated the importance of rapid and accurate burnt area mapping exploiting sophisticated algorithms such as ML, when applied to Sentinel-2 imagery. Our findings provide valuable information regarding random forests and support vector machines classifiers through comparisons during their implementation as well as the potential of automated mapping in cloud-based platforms such as GEE. All in all, burnt area mapping is very valuable toward preparation activities regarding postfire management in future fire incidents.
... Water is a natural resource and often a scarce one Tsesmelis et al., 2019;Kalogeropoulos et al., 2023). The importance of water has been recognized since the time of early societies. ...
In recent decades, a critical factor that policy makers have taken into account when assessing the environment is climate change. This global natural process has already caused many problems in the natural and man-made environment. In the future, these problems are expected to multiply and become more severe. As a result, there will be much more pressure on water resources, resulting in water shortages in many more areas. The management of water, such an important resource, requires the adoption of management techniques adapted to the needs of each region and each season. It is one part of the spectrum of environmental management. It seeks an acceptable balance between the available water resources and the often-competing uses of water using technical and non-technical means. The decline in groundwater resources, their degradation and intensive use mean that surface water exploitation projects need to be promoted. Projects that ensure the exploitation of surface water (dams, reservoirs, dams, refineries) are more environmentally friendly and help to protect the environment, save energy and, in some cases, generate energy from renewable sources. These projects are made even more attractive by the availability of unused water, greater protection for consumers, the possibility of multiple uses of water and the creation of new jobs. This chapter presents a methodology for selecting suitable sites for the construction of small reservoirs to harness surface runoff. The use of primary data, such as meteorological and spatial data in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) framework, with the integration of an appropriate hydrological model can reveal locations/areas suitable for the construction of small reservoirs. The island of Andros (Cyclades, Greece) is the study area for this proposed methodology. Several locations on the island were examined and finally three locations were selected for the construction of small reservoirs.
... The Mediterranean region, due to its specific morphological, climatic, and atmospheric conditions, is classified as a moderate-and high-emitting region, revealing a strong response to global climate variability [3][4][5]. Moreover, its periods of low rainfall coincide with periods of high temperatures and high water demand, which further complicates the situation [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Drought is an insidious natural hazard that takes place when the relevant precipitation rate is below the average value for a region for more than one period, resulting in insufficient water supplies for both human activities and environmental standards to be sufficiently covered [10,[14][15][16][17][18]. ...
The ever-increasing need for water, the alteration in the climate, and its observed changes over recent years have triggered a lot of research studies associated with the phenomenon of drought. Within the wider geographical region of the Mediterranean, the relevant scientific subject seems to be of great interest, since it is undoubtedly related to a number of severe socio-economic consequences. This present effort focuses on the evolution of this particular phenomenon over time, within the borders of nine different countries in the Eastern Mediterranean (Athens, Greece—Europe; Constantinople, Turkey—Asia; Nicosia, Cyprus—Europe; Jerusalem, Israel—Asia; Amman, Jordan—Asia; Damascus, Syria—Asia; Beirut, Lebanon—Asia; Cairo, Egypt—Africa; and Tripoli Libya—Africa). By applying the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI), examining precipitation data at the month level (January 1901 to December 2020), and utilizing the Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) method, the spatio–temporal variability of drought events in the Eastern Mediterranean area was studied. In Jerusalem, long-term droughts presented a higher than usual volume, in accordance with applying the 12- and 24-month SPI, starting from the mid-20th century. Similarly, the region of Damascus presented a similar pattern to those in Beirut, Amman, and Jerusalem. An upward trend in the frequency of extreme drought events was observed for the last thirty years. The same trend seems to be true in terms of the duration of dry periods. Drought events have also been observed in the central, southern, and eastern regions of Turkey. A downward trend was observed in Cairo based on a trend analysis of its monthly precipitation.
... Water is a natural resource and often a scarce one Tsesmelis et al., 2019;. The importance of water has been recognized since the time of early societies. ...
... Precipitation patterns have also been affected by climate change, resulting in higher frequencies of floods and flash floods (Wuebbles et al. 2017). The frequencies of heat waves and droughts have also increased at an alarming rate, resulting in a higher deforestation rate and significant disruption to urban areas and wildlife (Leite et al. 2020;Tsesmelis et al. 2019). The National Climate Assessment Agency has recently highlighted that the changing climate is projected to continue beyond this century, with impacts vary based on the amount of greenhouse gases transferred from the earth surface to the atmosphere (USGCRP 2018). ...
In the past decades, the United States of America and Canada have witnessed a continuous increase in the frequency and magnitude of climate change-induced natural disasters. These events include droughts, floods, wildfires, and most recently, tornadoes. In 2016, climate change induced damage was estimated to be $8.6 billion in Canada, while in the United States of America, floods are becoming one of the costliest and highest in occurrence of all climate change induced hazards, costing an average of $8 billion dollars annually. Also, hurricanes such as hurricane Sandy cost over $67 billion dollars of total damage, while more recently. hurricane Florence resulted in an estimated damage of $5 billion so far. It is thus clear that the effect of climate change is already costing North Americans billions of dollars annually, at an increasing rate. Coupled with climate change, the expansive developments of urban areas are causing a significant increase in flood-related disasters worldwide. However, most flood risk analysis and categorization efforts have been focused solely on the hydrologic features of flood hazards (e.g., inundation depth and duration) without considering the resulting long-term consequences in terms of losses and recovery time, and thus the community’s flood resilience. The aim of this study is to develop a flood resilience classification system at a community level that can be used in the development of disaster managerial insights and risk mitigation measures, to better prepare urban areas from future flood risks. This data-driven model will categorize communities using Machine learning classification techniques, bypassing the complexity and probabilistic nature of physics-based models.
... Immigration, unemployment, poverty, reducing food security, and reducing social security are some of the consequences of drought, especially in less developed countries with weak economic potential (Kumar et al. 2022;Melville-Rea 2022;Moghimi and Zarei 2021). Different regions have different vulnerabilities to drought depending on various factors such as the degree of water dependence, climate conditions, the ratio of rain-fed agriculture to total agriculture, soil situation, cropping pattern, type of land use, etc., Tsesmelis et al. 2018;Zehtabian et al. 2005). Therefore, determining the level of the vulnerability of different regions to drought occurrence or even its prediction can be effective in determining the areas with higher priority to manage the adverse effects of drought. ...
... Fang et al. (2019) evaluated the vulnerability of vegetation to drought using the correlation of the monthly normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and standardized precipitation index (SPI) over the Loess Plateau in China. Tsesmelis et al. (2018) assessed the vulnerability to drought occurrence and desertification in Greece from 1983 to 1996. Keshavarz et al. (2017) evaluated the livelihood vulnerability of farmers to drought in Iran. ...
... Also, the slop (X14), the soil erodibility (X16), and the soil fertility (X15) indicators with weights equal to 0.009, 0.013, and 0.014 (respectively) have the least effect on vulnerability to drought. The compatibility Ratio (CR) of Fuzzy-AHP was less than 0.1 (CR = 0.081); therefore, the weighted results for each of the indicators are reliable (Song and Kang 2016) (Fig. 6). Zarei et al. (2021) also, have proved that the X2, X12, and X18 were the most effective criteria for vulnerability to meteorological, agricultural, and hydrological droughts, respectively. ...
Vulnerabilities of different regions to drought are under the influence of different factors such as the land use, accessibility to the surface and subsurface water resources, etc. In this research, using the information of 18 effective indicators on the region’s vulnerability to agrometeorological drought, the vulnerability of Fars province to agrometeorological drought was assessed and predicted. For this purpose, first, a drought vulnerability map for each of the indicators for 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020 years was prepared (all indicators were classified into mild (Mi), moderate (Mo), severe (Se), and very severe (VSe) classes). Then the weight of each indicator was determined using the Fuzzy-AHP method. In the next step, by superposition the criteria’s maps based on their weight, the final vulnerability maps to drought were prepared for the years mentioned above. Finally, using the second-order Markov chain method, the vulnerability class to agrometeorological drought was predicted for each pixel (34,200 pixels) over the Fars province for 2025 and 2030. The results indicated that the ratio of rain-fed cultivated area to total agricultural lands (0.215) and slop (0.009) had the highest and lowest weights. The study area in all years was classified into Mo (east and northern regions) and Se (west and southern regions) vulnerability classes. Based on the Spearman test, from 2000 to 2020, the area percent of the Mo and Se classes of vulnerability had a decreasing and increasing trend, respectively. The validation test of the second-order Markov chain showed that this model has 92% accuracy for predicting the vulnerability classes. Also, in 2025 and 2030, the area percentage of the Mo class will be equal to 57.17% and 57.30% of the study area, and the area percentage of the Se class will be equal to 42.83% and 42.70%.
... Numerous challenges are linked to natural resources degradation, such as pollution, water scarcity and stress, overexploitation, extreme hydrological events (droughts and floods) soil erosion and desertification [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. In addition, the compound effect of anthropogenic interventions and inappropriate and/or uncoordinated management actions to use and/or protect natural resources could cause significant environmental degradation that may even be irreversible in vulnerable ecosystems [9,10]. ...
Natural resources degradation poses multiple challenges, particularly to environmental
and economic processes. It is usually difficult to identify the degree of degradation and the critical vulnerability values in the affected systems. Thus, among other tools, indices (composite indicators) may also describe these complex systems or phenomena. In this approach, the Water and Land Resources Degradation Index was applied to the fifth largest Mediterranean island, Crete, for the 1999–2014 period. The Water and Land Resources Degradation Index uses 11 water and soil resources related indicators: Aridity Index, Water Demand, Drought Impacts, Drought Resistance Water Resources Infrastructure, Land Use Intensity, Soil Parent Material, Plant Cover, Rainfall, Slope,
and Soil Texture. The aim is to identify the sensitive areas to degradation due to anthropogenic interventions and natural processes, as well as their vulnerability status. The results for Crete Island indicate that prolonged water resources shortages due to low average precipitation values or high water demand (especially in the agricultural sector), may significantly affect Water and Land degradation processes. Hence, Water and Land Resources Degradation Index could serve as an extra tool to assist policymakers to improve their decisions to combat Natural Resources degradation.
... Such undesirable alterations and/or hazards, such as earthquakes, droughts, and floods, the so-called natural hazards, can present intractable difficulties and complications to human systems. [4][5][6][7][8][9] Today, natural resource degradation generates pressure in the environment, including qualitative and quantitative impacts on water resources, overexploitation, desertification, soil erosion, deforestation, and environmental degradation. This degradation is of increasing societal concern. ...
... [10][11][12] In addition, human activities may pressure these delicate ecological systems and further load the status of natural resources. 8,13 In this context, it is obvious that droughts are among the extreme natural hazards that can affect urban and industrial water supply and irrigation, and in general human life. 14,15 Droughts usually score from a mixture of environmental principles that can increase due to human intervention. ...
... 18,[47][48][49] Practical explanations allow the determination of the stages and the degree of severity of drought, 50,51 which are categorized into four different key lines: meteorological, hydrological, agricultural, and socioeconomic drought. 8,9,52,53 Drought is a provisional condition (months/years) compared to aridity (enduring climate state). 54,55 The continuous development of studies related to drought indicators improves the methods and tools used, but also provides specific criteria for the implementation of policies (for drought management development, critical area recognition, comparability, threshold characterizations, monitoring improvement), and precision planning and mobilization of resources and moderation approaches. ...
The scope of the present research is to assess drought events using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), which can provide accurate results of drought features on a spatiotemporal scale for Greece. The climate in Greece is a typical northern Mediterranean, with most of the rainfall events noted throughout the period between November and April, with hot and arid summers. However, owing to their unique topography, Hellenic territories have a significant variety of microclimates. Moreover, in western Greece (Region of Epirus), Pindus starts from north to south and has a wet climate with maritime features. SPI is a useful tool, and its importance can be noted in its clarity and power to recognize the severity, duration, and extent of a drought phenomenon. In addition, an alert drought warning system may be combined with contingency planning and water resource planning. In this context, the study area, as it often faces devastating drought damage and impacts, offers a very suitable opportunity for this application. The proposed methodology studies the SPI calculation for all Hellenic territories, and it was evaluated using precipitation time-series data. The selected calibrated SPI application covers the period 1981–2010 using data from 33 precipitation stations and time scales of 6 and 12 months. The SPI is calculated using software developed by the DMCSEE Project. Then, the spatial transformation of the SPI outputs was achieved using geostatistical methods using geographical information systems. Based on the index results, the drought years were 1989–90, 1992–93, 2000, and 2007–08 with the most severe event, both in duration and intensity, were in 1989–90. The SPI results underline its potential in a drought warning system and forecasting attempt as part of a sustainable drought contingency planning effort.
... Consequently, several assessment models have been developed. They include ecological/environmental vulnerability index (EVI) (Aretano et al., 2015;Cheng, 2019;Guo et al., 2019;Hou et al., 2015;Song et al., 2010a, b), social vulnerability index (SVI) (Abson et al., 2012;Fekete, 2019;Gupta et al., 2019), standardized drought vulnerability index (SDVI) (Tsesmelis et al., 2019), and environmental sensitive areas index (ESAI) (Tsesmelis et al., 2018). Note that SVI is appropriate when searching the impact of human activities on ecosystems. ...
... The Bayesian Kriging interpolation (Mainali and Pricope, 2017;Tsesmelis et al., 2018Tsesmelis et al., , 2019 was applied to points data to convert them into raster form for their geographic signification. All Landsat scenes images were preprocessed to correct the atmospheric effect and mosaicked into a new raster image to enable the extraction of information required for the study area. ...
Human activities constitute the source of disturbance in ecosystems. The Oueme basin, exposed to intensive agriculture practices, mainly cotton and cowpea, is considered a vulnerable area. The current study assessed the impact of agriculture on this basin. To do this, using thirteen indicators, grouped into four factors, we evaluated the basin vulnerability by establishing a social vulnerability index (SVI) between 2000 and 2016. Later, based on study outcomes, we were able to identify the crop that threatened this basin. The reliability of vulnerability assessment requires the multicriteria method to accurately determine the relative degree of influence of study indicators, reflected in their weighting coefficient. Therefore, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method was applied to indicators. Results revealed an increase in the rate of SVI. According to the spatial distribution, the closer to the north, the greater the SVI. Regardless of the study year, the northern Oueme basin was consistently identified as vulnerable, while the central basin was stable. Vulnerable and stable areas accounted for 12.01% and 34.97%, while they accounted for 14.22% and 13.72% for 2016. A significant decrease in the stable area and an increase in the vulnerable area were detected. Based on this study classification, the slightly vulnerable area (34.97%, also named stable) was identified as the largest for 2000 against the mildly vulnerable area (28.19%) for 2016. Climate has experienced significant changes, and the cotton crop was identified as a threat to the Oueme basin.
Graphical abstract
