A new study has found that the increase in soil erosion in coastal areas due to desertification is worsening flood impacts on Middle Eastern and North African port cities.
The researchers focused their observations on the devastating 2023 floods in the city of Derna, Libya, which took the lives of more than 11,300 people and showed how the increase in soil erosion significantly contributed to the catastrophic toll of these unusual desert floods. The research was published almost a year after the deadly flood happened on the September 10, 2023.
While some scholars believe that that droughts are the Sahara's deadliest threat, Heggy warns this is not the case. His collaborating paper,"Assessing flash flood erosion following Storm Daniel in Libya," he says, provides the evidence. Using a series of Sentinel-1A C-band orbital Synthetic Aperture Radar images, the researchers measured the changes in the returned signal coherence, which informed the changes in surface textural properties before and after the storm's occurrence.
Radar satellites, Heggy says, overcome this limitation."Improving the monitoring of arid watersheds using advanced radar satellites will be crucial for mitigating these devastating risks across several parts of the Sahara, Arabian Peninsula, and other deserts." There are also added risk factors, notes Heggy: Storms are getting stronger, and cities are getting more populous and less organized in terms of policies to reduce development and increase disaster preparedness.
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