The environmental geomorphological assessment of the urban expansion in al-Khiran Marine city, Kuwait

Abstract EN

Al-Khiran city is locatcd in the extreme southeast coast of the State of Kuwait, near the Kuwaiti Saudi border.

This city has witnessed massive urban developments and changes in the geomorphology of its coastline, cspcdally after the launch of Al- Khiran Marine City Project.

This project is set to be performed in five stages: the first three stages (A 1.

A2, A3) had been completed in 2

and 2009 respectively, and currently work is ongoing to complete the performance of the fourth and fifth phases.

Building this marine city has caused geomorphological changes in the shape, topography and the lengths of coastline.

As a result, some natural geomorphological phenomena have vanished and been replaced by artificial forms, for example, the natural creeks (Khors)have turned into artificial ones and the phenomenon of the tidal fiats on the coastline have disappeared and been replaced by artificial beaches with washed sands from the desert.

The marshes have also disappeared and been replaced by residential areas and entertainment resorts, and some artificial islands have also been developed in the creeks (Khors).

Consequently, the length of the coastline has increased from 22.6 km in 2000 to 132.5 km in 2015.

and al ter the end of the project, the coastline is set to be about 200 km long: therefore, monitoring these changes and comparing them shall reveal a lot of dysfunction and environmental destruction that arc man-made.

The aim of this paper is to follow and assess the environmental geomorphological changes in the study area to rcali/c the dangers resulting from the urban development in Al-Khiran area.

This shall be done by measuring the biodiversity, landforms and geomor- phological processes on the coastline of the city.

To achieve the objectives of the study, several methods and means have been used, such as: field studies, comparison of the geomorphological changes observed by the old and new space images in addition to the use of Geographic Information System (CilS) and Remote Sensing (RS).