The paper examines flooding issues under rapid urbanization in Gazipasa city during the past seven years 2013-2019. The Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) integrated with the satellite images representing temporal variation in the land use and land cover (LULC) characteristics of the city were used to determine the variation in the runoff generation capacity, flood volume, and associated risks. The Google Earth software together with GIS technology were utilized to create and handle spatial data required for SWMM simulation. Standard design storm intensity derived from the local intensity-duration-frequency curves was used as the stationary input parameter for SWMM simulation in both the past and current LULC conditions. The comparison between LULC maps showed that the extent of urban imperviousness area has been approximately increased by 80% in average. The SWMM simulations showed the peak flood value of 51.3 m3/sec and 61.4 m³/sec for the year 2013 and 2019, respectively. Moreover, under the same design storm, Rational Method has been applied and 39 m3/sec of peak flow rate has been calculated by disregarding the urbanization activity. The results indicate that the LULC variation during the past seven years resulted in almost 20% (18%) increase in peak flow (flood volume).

In this article, meteorological and agricultural droughts across the Erbil province, Iraq, were assessed using remote sensing data and satellite products. To this end, the long-term (2000–2022) Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration index (SPEI) at 1- and 3-month accumulation periods (SPEI-1 and SPEI-3) as well as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) across Erbil were utilized. While the former was retrieved from the global SPEI data repository, the latter was derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) products. The spatiotemporal variations in the SPEI indices indicated that two to nine extreme drought events occurred in the province with an increasing northward pattern. An increasing trend in the long-term NDVI series was also detected, having more diversity in vegetation coverage in the northern part of the province. The relationship between the SPEI and MODIS-NDVI was found to be positive but insignificant. Thus, we concluded that short-term meteorological droughts were not the only reason for the agricultural droughts in Erbil. Furthermore, the climate characteristics related to the cumulative water balance over a previous season is not an important trigger for the spatial variation in vegetation coverage across the province.

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