Climate change, the Arab spring, and COVID-19 - Impacts on landcover transformations in the Levant

Abstract

The Levant is a climatically sensitive region that suffers from prolonged heat waves contributing to societal crisis and massive population displacements. At least since 2010 and the so-called Arab Spring, the region has experienced recurring socio-political turmoil and the Syrian civil war, which amplified economic and ecological pressure on the neighbouring countries. Particularly in Jordan, the strong population growth in addition to the immigration of hundreds of thousands Syrian refugees has led to massive changes in land-use and built-up infrastructure, resulting in an over-exploitation of the landscape through irrigated crop plantations and unregulated construction activities. Currently, the situation is further socio-politically fuelled by the so-called Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. The interplay of climate variability, built-up change, landcover transformation, and population development, however, is not yet fully understood. In this article, a multicomponent trend analysis from climate variables, satellite imagery, and landcover datasets is presented that highlights the strong increase in building activity over the past decades and emphasizes the interconnection of climate change prediction models and current socio-political development in the Levant. Groundwater exploitation for domestic use, crop production, and industrial purposes will further enhance social inequality, the pressure on the local ecological functionalities, and risks severe and irreversible land degradation.