Assessing Anthropogenic and Climate Change Threats to Archaeological Landscapes in Iraq Using Earth Observation

Iraq is among the five countries most vulnerable to climate change impacts. Its cultural landscapes and heritage are exposed to erosion, weathering, abandonment and, eventually, disappearance. An approach combining satellite and on-the-ground observations to investigate anthropogenic and climate change-related processes is being developed in the framework of the Italian National Research Council – UK Royal Society bilateral cooperation programme. The data analysis workflow capitalises on decades of Earth observation imagery, including declassified HEXAGON, Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 multispectral data. The goal is to delineate archaeological sites and ancient water systems (canals, water bodies, wells), and generate derived products (e.g. yearly change detection maps based on interferometric coherence and vegetation indices variation, zonation of areas impacted by dust storms) depicting occurred transformations, regional susceptibility and endangered heritage sites.