Morphometric Inferences of the Euphrates River Islands and the Possibility of their Development through the Analysis of Remote Sensing Data and Geographic Information Systems

Abstract

River islands are considered one of the most important components of the development of the river environment, due to their function as a ground appearance that hinders the speed of the flow of the river stream and the distribution of that flow over the seasons of the year, and these islands are important in creating environmental balance, as their components of sand have a role in reducing pollutants due to the mechanism of denitrogenization as a weakening element for aquatic organisms, and their cadastral development is of great importance in the possibilities of creating development opportunities for the surrounding areas, which are still the mechanism of investment of these islands is still limited to a very high degree, and therefore the aim of the study is to identify and compare the engineering characteristics of one of the most important islands of the Euphrates River by measuring its areas and height from the river and comparing its cadastral development in all its engineering dimensions using remote sensing data and processing it in the GIS environment, and the results showed that the area of the island has developed between 1973, which amounted to 289.07 m² to 2024 4,681.18 m² to reach the final length of the island 3,587 meters The results showed that the island takes a shape close to a rectangle with a strip extension, where the values ​​according to the results of the aspect ratio reached (30.94), Its heights range between 32 - 58 meters above sea level, with a height difference of up to 2 meters from the riverbed. Its climatic effects are evident through the dense vegetation cover, which ranged according to NDVI between 1 - 0.92 in 1973 to 0.74-1 in 2024, and it has also become one of the most important lands that humans have begun to exploit for many purposes, including grazing. There is a need for further study on the development of river islands over time, and the importance of the impact of this study appears through alerting the community and farmers living in the region to the possibility of investing in these islands for many purposes, while being careful of the possibility of their exposure to sudden river floods.