Hamdi A. ZurqaniUniversity of Arkansas at Monticello · College of Forestry, Agriculture, and Natural Resources
Hamdi A. Zurqani
Doctor of Philosophy
About
62
Publications
26,420
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385
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Introduction
My research focuses on the development of applications for new technologies in the field of environmental information sciences, geo-intelligence (advanced geo-information science and earth observation, machine and deep learning, and big data analytics), remote sensing, land evaluation, pedology, land use management/ planning, monitoring and evaluating sustainable land management, change detection of landscape degradation, and geographic information system models.
Additional affiliations
July 2021 - present
Position
- Professor (Assistant)
Description
- Assistant Professor of Geospatial Science in Natural Resource Management and Conservation
Publications
Publications (62)
Land cover change can result in soil-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Climate Action Plan for the State of Maine in the United States of America (U.S.A.) can benefit from the analysis of land cover change and the value of soil carbon (C) regulating ecosystem services (ES) and disservices (ED). The objectives of this study were to (1) deter...
Many climate change “solution” plans include net-zero goals, which involve balancing the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) with their removal. Achieving net-zero goals is particularly problematic for soils because they are often excluded from GHG inventories and reduction plans. For example, Maryland’s Climate Solutions Now Act (Senate B...
Many climate change “solution” plans include net-zero goals, which involve balancing the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) with their anthropogenic removal. Achieving net-zero goals is particularly problematic for soils because they are often excluded from GHG inventories and reduction plans. For example, Maryland’s Climate Solutions Now...
Conflicts of interest (COI) are an integral part of human society, including their influence on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change. Individuals or entities often have multiple interests ranging from financial benefits to reducing climate change-related risks, where choosing one interest may negatively impact other interests and socie...
This book addresses the environmental challenges that Libya and similar countries in the regions are currently facing. Each chapter of this book provides a methodology using remote sensing (RS) and geographical information systems (GIS) dealing with one of these environmental challenges such as monitoring and mapping soil salinity and prediction of...
This chapter introduces the book “Environmental Applications of Remote Sensing and GIS in Libya”, and summarizes all the chapters presented in this book. The chapters of this book focus on the use and the role of remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) techniques in understanding, monitoring, and investigating the extent of envi...
Soil salinity in irrigated agricultural regions is a growing problem. Saline soil conditions have reduced the value and productivity of considerable areas of land all over the globe. Direct methods of measuring soil salinity are time-consuming and expensive. Monitoring soil salinity can help to evaluate the effectiveness of having a drainage system...
Drought is one of the most important and complex climatic and environmental extreme events in terms of measuring, monitoring, and determining the related potential effects and hazards. In this study, a remote sensing–based Vegetation Health Index (VHI) was used to measure the drought conditions in vegetated areas of Libya. In order to ensure the hi...
Understanding the distribution of soil properties over the landscape is required for a variety of land resource management applications, modeling, and monitoring practices. The main aim of this research is to conduct a spatial prediction of selected topsoil properties such as soil pH, calcium carbonate (CaCO3); exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP);...
Flooding impacts from heavy rainfall, thunderstorm, and other natural hazards are a significant concern in many areas of the world. The objectives of this study were to: (1) develop a framework to identify flood-affected areas after storm impact; (2) map the flooded areas caused by the heavy rainfall and thunderstorm in the region; and (3) assess t...
Rapid urbanization development in Libya increases decision-makers’ concerns regarding issues related to natural resources, such as converting plantation forests, natural vegetation, and agricultural lands into urban development. Assessment of land cover is fundamental to understand and cope with these concerns. The objectives of this study are to:...
This chapter highlights the most important conclusions and recommendations from all chapters to provide perspective and guidance for students, teachers, researchers, decision-makers, etc. It includes summarized information on the latest research studies that used remote sensing (RS) and geographical information systems (GIS) techniques for environm...
The Vermont (VT) Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA, 2020) sets greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions reduction targets at 26% below 2005 by 2025, 40% below 1990 by 2030 and 80% below 1990 by 2050 for energy-related emissions only. Vermont’s omission of GHG emissions from land conversions could result in significant costs of inaction (COI), which could hi...
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from landcover conversions contribute to the total carbon (C) footprint (CF), which is the sum of GHG emissions from various sources and events expressed as carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent. Soil-based emissions from land conversions are often excluded from the total CF, which can lead to underreporting the CF. This st...
Delaware’s (DE) Climate Action Plan lays out a pathway to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 26% by 2025 but does not consider soil-based GHG emissions from land conversions. Consequently, DE’s climate action plan fails to account for the contribution of emissions from ongoing land development economic activity to climate change. Sou...
Goal: This unique book will address a range of water resources management issues, especially those that are relevant to the water quality in Libya. It will cover topics such as the assessment and prediction of water quality, salt-water intrusion, treatment of wastewater for reuse, and desalination as an alternative source of water. It will also pro...
The state of Massachusetts (MA) has passed comprehensive climate change legislation and a roadmap of achieving Net Zero emissions in 2050, which includes the protection of environmental resources (e.g., soil) and green space across the state. Soil resources are an integral part of the land cover/land use. They can be a significant source of greenho...
Crowdsourcing is an important tool for collecting spatio-temporal data, which has various applications in education. The objectives of this study were to develop and test a laboratory exercise on soil erosion by water and field data crowdsourcing in an online introductory soil science course (FNR 2040: Soil Information Systems) at Clemson Universit...
The state of Rhode Island (RI) has established its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goals, which require rapidly acquired and updatable science-based data to make these goals enforceable and effective. The combination of remote sensing and soil information data can estimate the past and model future GHG emissions because of conversion of “l...
River systems face negative impacts from development and removal of riparian vegetation that provide critical shading in the face of climate change. This study used supervised deep learning to accurately classify the land cover, including shading, of the Chauga River watershed, located in Oconee County, South Carolina, for 2011 and 2019. The study...
Integration of land cover change with soil information is important for valuation of soil carbon (C) regulating ecosystem services (ES) and disservices (ED) and for site-specific land management. The objective of this study was to assess the change in value of regulating ES from soil or-ganic carbon (SOC), soil inorganic carbon (SIC), and total soi...
Geospatial analysis using remote sensing data has emerged as an effective tool to monitor irrigated lands over a variety of climatic conditions and locations. Humid and heterogeneous landscapes such as those in the South Atlantic Coastal Plain are challenging for satellite image classification over large spatial extents. The objectives of this stud...
This article focuses on mapping tropical deforestation using time series and machine learning algorithms. Before detecting changes in the time series, we reduced seasonality using Photosynthetic Vegetation (PV) index fractions obtained from Landsat images. Single and multi-temporal filters were used to reduce speckle noise from Synthetic Aperture R...
Valuation of soil carbon (C) regulating ecosystem services (ES) at the state level is important for sustainable C management. The objective of this study was to assess the value of regulating ES from soil organic carbon (SOC), soil inorganic carbon (SIC), and total soil carbon (TSC) stocks, based on the concept of the avoided social cost of carbon...
This book presents the soil pedodiversity in Libya. Soils are the source of all life; there can be no life without them. Further, each soil has its own history and its present conditions, which have been shaped by many different factors (e.g. climate, biota, parent material, and relief or topography). The book, divided into eight chapters, provides...
Vegetation refers to the plants and trees that are found in a particular region. The geographical location and climatic conditions of Libya strongly influence the vegetation status. The diversity of natural vegetation in Libya varies according to the climatic zone and soil types. Acknowledging that most of the country consists of desert dry areas,...
Soil forming factors not only affect the course of the genesis process but also the present and future performance of the soil system, in terms of how much organic matter, air, and water and how many organisms, nutrients, and minerals it can store. This chapter discusses the soil formation factors (climate, biota, parent material, relief or topogra...
In this chapter, the authors outline the development of historical soil knowledge, education, and research in Libya. In addition, they reviewed the soil institutes and universities conducting research on soil science. This review has shown that Libya's capacity to absorb new technologies is now greater than before. Due to the continuous rise in edu...
As mentioned in Chap. 3, soils and their properties in Libya are influenced to the great extent by nature and conditions in which these soils were formed. Hence, the types of soil formed in Libya differ from one place to another, and this difference is related to the diversity in the factors responsible for soil formation. In this chapter, we discu...
Desertification and land degradation represent a major threat to agricultural sustainable development. It puts the livelihoods of billions of people around the world at risk in arid and semi-arid regions. This is especially the case for people living in rural areas where the majority of the poor live in rural areas. Human pressures and climate vari...
Agricultural use and production in arid environments (i.e., Libya) can be affected by many numbers of constraints and limitations. Most of these constraints are related to the dry and hot climatic conditions and the absence of vegetative cover. These climatic conditions lead to the formation of soil types that have very poor soil attributes and lim...
Soil is an essential and nonrenewable natural resource from which most of the global food is produced. Each soil has had its own history and its present conditions due to the influences of many different factors. This chapter presents an introduction about the soils of Libya and demonstrates the challenges that the country is currently facing as a...
Sustainable management of soil carbon (C) at the state level requires valuation of soil C regulating ecosystem services (ES) and disservices (ED). The objective of this study was to assess the value of regulating ES from SOC, SIC, and TSC stocks, based on the concept of the avoided social cost of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for the state of Sout...
![Figure 5. Number of endangered soil series [2] and percent of the total...](profile/Elena-Mikhailova-6/publication/349961747/figure/fig3/AS:1004983705165824@1616618195440/Number-of-endangered-soil-series-2-and-percent-of-the-total-US-population-2019-60_Q320.jpg)
![Figure 6. Number of endangered soil series [2] and percent of the urban...](profile/Elena-Mikhailova-6/publication/349961747/figure/fig4/AS:1004983705161730@1616618195483/Number-of-endangered-soil-series-2-and-percent-of-the-urban-population-within-each_Q320.jpg)
Soil ecosystem services (ES) (e.g., provisioning, regulation/maintenance, and cultural) and ecosystem disservices (ED) are dependent on soil diversity/pedodiversity (variability of soils), which needs to be accounted for in the economic analysis and business decision-making. The concept of pedodiversity (biotic + abiotic) is highly complex and can...
Conventional site index (tree height at base age) may not be suitable for urban trees, therefore it is important to assess its applicability in urban environments. In addition, rapid and non-destructive tree age evaluation methods need to be developed. The objectives of this study were to: (1) develop a rapid and non-destructive method to determine...
A “soil carbon hotspot” (SCH) is a geographic area having an abundance of soil carbon, and therefore higher ecosystems services value based on avoided social costs of CO2 emissions. Soil organic carbon (SOC), soil inorganic carbon (SIC), and total soil carbon (TSC) are critical data to help identify SCH at the farm scale, but monetary methods of ho...
Spatial and temporal changes in land cover have direct impacts on the hydrological cycle and stream quality. Techniques for accurately and efficiently mapping these changes are evolving quickly, and it is of interest to ask how useful these techniques are to address the environmental impact of land cover on riparian buffer areas. The objectives of...
Fluvial dynamics are an important aspect of land-use planning as well as ecosystem conservation. Lack of floodplain and flood inundation maps can cause severe implication on land-use planning and development as well as in disaster management. However, flood hazard delineation traditionally involves hydrologic models and uses hydraulic data or histo...
Current applications of the Ecosystems Services (ES) framework to soils are narrowly defined (e.g., soil-based, pedosphere-based, etc.), and focus on soil properties while treating soil as a closed system. Because soil is an open system, it receives and loses matter across its boundaries within Earth’s spheres (atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, l...
Many soil regulating ecosystem services (ES) are linked to Earth’s atmosphere, but associated monetary values often are unknown or difficult to quantify. Atmospheric deposition of calcium (Ca2+) and magnesium (Mg2+) are abiotic flows (wet, dry, and total) from the atmosphere to land surfaces, which potentially can become available to sequester carb...
Land cover change is one of the most important issues facing the landscape of the
Southeastern United States. Land use change impacts the natural environment and it
is critical to understand the location and rate of change in forests near rapidly
urbanizing areas. The objectives of this study are to determine the classes and the
distribution of lan...
This research is composed of three parts: 1) Adaptation of Soil Judging to Libya, 2) Predicting the classes and distribution of salt-affected soils in Northwest Libya, and 3) Geospatial analysis of land use change in the Savannah River Basin using Google Earth.
Soil judging (Evaluation) plays an important role in soil science education. Libya has...
Lithospheric-derived resources such as soil texture and coarse fragments are key soil physical properties that contribute to ecosystem services (ES), which can be valued based on “soil” or “mineral” stocks. Soil survey data provides an inexpensive alternative to detailed field measurements which are often labor-intensive, time-consuming, and costly...
![Figure 1. Locations of agricultural activities in Libya [14].](profile/Christopher-Post/publication/333118078/figure/fig1/AS:759896177926149@1558184775517/Locations-of-agricultural-activities-in-Libya-14_Q320.jpg)
![Figure 5. Values of crops produced in Libya in 2016 [34] in relation to...](profile/Christopher-Post/publication/333118078/figure/fig4/AS:759896177909765@1558184775997/Values-of-crops-produced-in-Libya-in-2016-34-in-relation-to-the-Healthy-Eating-Plate_Q320.jpg)
Ecosystem Services (ES) are increasingly being used by many countries around the world as a framework for addressing the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This review article of the usability of Libyan soil databases for ES and SDGs is the first of its kind for North Africa. The objectives of the article are to: describe ava...
Soil databases are of great importance in assessing ecosystem services at different administrative levels (e.g., state, region etc.). Soil databases provide information about numerous soil properties, including soil inorganic carbon (SIC) which is a naturally occurring liming material that regulates soil pH and performs other key functions related...
Climate and land use/cover change are among the most pervasive issues facing the Southeastern United States, including the Savannah River basin in South Carolina and Georgia. Land use directly affects the natural environment across the Savannah River basin and it is important to analyze these impacts. The objectives of this study are to: 1) determi...
Soil textural information is an important component underlying other soil health indicators. Soil texture analysis is a common procedure, but it can be labor intensive and expensive. Soil texture data typically are available from the Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) database, which may be an option for determining soil health texture groups (SHTG)....
Soil provides many of the requirements needed for terrestrial plant growth, including an adequate supply of water. Because the proportion of plant roots is usually greatest in the top 10 to 15 cm of soil, the soil moisture content in the Ap horizon is particularly important for plant growth and crop yields. Uncertainties in estimates of plant avail...
Sodicity and salinity can adversely affect soil structure and are common constraints to plant growth in arid regions. Current remote sensing techniques cannot distinguish between the various classes of salt-affected soils. Field and laboratory measurements of salt-affected soils are time-consuming and expensive. Mapping of the salt-affected soils c...
Soil carbon is a key soil property related to ecosystem services and it is often used in soil carbon content estimates at various scales. Uncertainties in soil carbon estimates often arise from variability in field, laboratory, and/or geospatial data at a farm scale. The objectives of this study were to quantify and compare levels of soil organic c...
Soil Judging teaches field identification of soil types, their properties, and interpretations for use and it can be beneficial to students as well as government agencies and the private sector in Libya. Soil judging focuses on determining the soil characteristics of soil profiles and making interpretations based on observation. The objective of th...
The challenge faces the world in the coming decades is to provide an adequate food supply for increasing populations. The food supply should be granted to 6 billion inhabitants on 2000 and excepted 8 billion people in 2025. Food supply shortages occurs in arid and semi-arid zones where a land degradation and desertification are the main obstacles f...
Food security for the ever increasing world’s populations is the main challenge faces agriculture production for the coming decades. Sustainable soil uses and management can play a key role in sustainable agriculture production. The evaluation of land for specific purpose is a crucial tool for land use planning. There are many land evaluation techn...
Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) have become important tools for detecting, mapping and monitoring degradation problems including their spatial variation and effect with time. The combination of RS and GIS can be considered as a high tech method that is cost, time and labour effective to assess the change in soil salinity...
Soil salinity is one of the most important issues in arid and semi arid regions, which is directly linked to desertification and land degradation. Several studies related to soil and water salinity assessment, and mapping were conducted in Libya using traditional methods. However, they covered only the time of measurements and did not address the d...
Soil salinity is one of the most important issues in arid and semi arid regions, which is directly linked to desertification and land degradation. Several studies related to soil and water salinity assessment, and mapping were conducted in Libya using traditional methods. However, they covered only the time of measurements and did not address the d...
Soil salinity is one of the most important issues in arid and semi arid regions, which is directly linked to desertification and land degradation. Several studies related to soil and water salinity assessment, and mapping were conducted in Libya using traditional methods. However, they covered only the time of measurements and did not address the d...
This is one of few studies that attempt to monitor and detect changes in soil salinity over time in northwestern Libya. Modern technologies were used, including geographic information systems (ArcGIS 9.2 and ArcView 3.3) and remote sensing systems (ERDAS IMAGINE 8.4). With the use of other available data, additional laboratory analysis was carried...
Projects
Projects (8)
Dear Colleagues,
On behalf of the world-leading research, educational and professional publisher "Springer Nature", I am pleased to invite you to contribute to the upcoming book titled "Applications of Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GoAl) in Environmental and Natural Resources Management and Research”.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. Also, feel free to forward this invitation to your colleagues as well.
Sincerely,
Hamdi
This unique book will address a range of water resources management issues, especially those that are relevant to the water quality in Libya. It will cover topics such as the assessment and prediction of water quality, salt-water intrusion, treatment of wastewater for reuse, and desalination as an alternative source of water. It will also provide up-to-date information on the impact of climate change on water resources in Libya and summarize the latest results of several systematic investigations and assesses the occurrence and quality of surface and underground waters in the country to help decision-makers plan for sustainable development. The methods presented in this book can also be applied in other regions with similar climate conditions. This book will share the knowledge and experience of experts and scientists who apply high-quality findings and input from their research to issues concerning the management of water resources and their quality in Libya
This research project involves the sampling and analysis of soils from green-tree reservoirs in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, with subsequent modeling using various digital soil mapping (DSM) techniques to develop a robust approach capable of estimating soil properties at unsampled locations.