Assessment Of Enviromental Threats Based On Remote Sensing Data For The Coastal Protected Areas Of Kenya

Protected areas are a clearly defined geographical space,recognized,dedicated and managed,through legal or other effective means,to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystems services and cultural values.The location of protected areas is diverse,Time is challenging the protection of human footprint;because of population growth needs more space,as well as climate change,is shortening the lifetime of protected areas.Floods,urban sprawl and soil erosion are of the most significant environmental threats globally affecting many protected areas.The coastal protected areas(Lamu and Mombasa)are one of these whose environmental threats are a fact.In this dissertation,the coastal protected areas have been studied to understand the environmental impact on them using remote sensing and GIS.Specifically,the purpose of this dissertation was to evaluate the environmental impact on the coastal protected area in the context of changing the climate and environmental threats respectively.It also purposed to understand the impact of natural hazards and socioeconomic,taking the coastal protected areas,as the cases study.This dissertation deals with the implementation of a flood prediction system and mitigates flood-induced consequences.Where,a framework of multi-criteria analysis incorporating geographic information system(GIS),fuzzy analytic hierarchy process(FAHP)and bivariate statistics-based methods,were developed for flood hazard index determination.Flood-prone areas were identified based on six factors(hydrological aspects and land cover);Elevation,Aspect,Slope,Flow Accumulation,Rainfall,and Landcover map.Obtained overall results have been adjusted with socioeconomic data such as a gross domestic product to relate the flood exposure to economic and demographic factors along with the coastal protected areas;Results suggest that the coastal area is largely dominated by a low slope has a high flood hazard index.While the coastal protected area such as Fort Jesus,which also has a status of the UNESCO World Heritage site is currently under high risk of flooding as shown by the Flood Hazard Index,as well as the shoreline.We investigated the spatial-temporal of landscape change along with the coastal protected areas,an integrated model of Markov chain and cellular automata models were applied to simulate urban growth and to predict spatial patterns.The output showed a reasonably good performance of an employed model.This model results demonstrate that the coastal area is growing very rapidly especially in the recent decadeWe explored the Quantification of Soil Losses along with the Coastal Protected Areas in Kenya.The purpose was to assess the state of soil erosion by water in the coastal area on the district level,and protected areas,as well as to predict the impact of support practices on soil reduction model.The factors used in the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation(RUSLE)is namely the rainfall and runoff erosivity factor(R),soil erodibility factor(K),slope length and steepness factor(LS),cover and management factor(C)and support practice factor related to slope factor(P).The results provided a reliable prediction of soil erosion rates and erosion of potential zones in the coastal area,which is home to the protected area such as World Heritages of Lamu Island and Fort Jesus,Mombasa.This alone would already have been an interesting endeavor worth investigating.However,the real value of the work lies also in the extensive application and comparison of traditional methods to fully understand the threats to the protected area.These methods are the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy process,cellular automata,Markov chain model and RUSLE for soil.In this dissertation,all these methods have been applied to the coastal protected area(Lamu Island,Coastal area at large and Mombasa).In this respect,the work can also serve as a text explaining the different approaches in their theoretical characteristics and practical applications in the protected area arena.The major value of this work is twofold: it shows a detailed comparison of existing methods to study environmental threats,and it presents a novel approach in environmental studies by applying the Fuzzy Analytical hierarchy process in the protected area.The dissertation has already spawned several journal papers thus this the dissertation opens new perspectives for scientific problems in environmental monitoring,modeling and change detectionBesides,to introduce a dynamic relationship between environmental threats to the protected areas and its context that will lead to greater reciprocal benefits through an inclusive approach of novelty,as well as contributing to the protected area literature,thus helping to be a benchmarking in countries with similar conditions,as the main output of this study.The innovated models such as Flood Hazard index improved Markov chain and cellular automata,and extensive revision of the soil erosion by water to the entire coastal protected area was the main key innovation to the subject.