Mapping land degradation hazard in Kuwait: using Delphi and AHP methods

Land degradation in Kuwait occurs in the form of wind and water erosion, soil deterioration, soil salinization and soil contamination by oil. In this study, a hazard map for land degradation was produced by integrating a Landsat image of March 2001 and nine maps of various attributes of Kuwait's physical environment in a Geographic Information System (GIS). These maps, used as criteria for rating the degree of land degradation hazard, are: (1) surface sediment, (2) drift potential sand, (3) topography, (4) soil, (5) vegetation, (6) land-use, (7) iso-salinity contour, (8) natural drainage, and (9) salinized areas. Delphi, an expert knowledge acquisition technique, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), were applied to determine the relative contributions of the above criteria to land degradation. The resulting map indicates that very high, high, moderate and low degrees of land degradation hazard in Kuwait constitutes about 15, 36.6, 35 and 13.4%, respectively.