Prehistory and palaeoenvironments of the western Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

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Human responses to climate and ecosystem change in ancient Arabia

“…Indeed, freshwater distributions may have been more geographically widespread during the HHP, as features that do not activate today would have been recharged by higher groundwater. During the more muted climatic amelioration of the HHP (relative to Late Pleistocene humid phases), it may be that lakes and wetlands were not permanent, with seasonal waters on playa surfaces providing an important primary water source for human populations (25). Moisture receipt in northern Arabia in the HHP is considered to primarily relate to summer monsoonal rainfall, although synchronous intensification of moisture from winter westerly storm tracks and Mediterranean cyclogenesis also has some potential to have reached the northern zones of the peninsula, raising some potential for winter surface water occurrence on pans.…”

“…Pleistocene Arabia saw major climatic shifts that appear to be closely linked to a complex history of hominin occupations (22,23). Significant improvements have been made in recent years in understanding the relationship between hominin dispersals and Pleistocene occupations through a combination of studies including paleoclimatic modeling of rainfall patterns (24), remote sensing to identify paleorivers and paleolakes (25), and interdisciplinary field programs (20)(21)(22)(23). This work has demonstrated the close relationship between fluctuations in humidity and aridity on the one hand and population expansions, contractions, and extirpations (20,23,26) on the other.…”

Remote Sensing of Human–Environment Interactions in Global Change Research: A Review of Advances, Challenges and Future Directions

“…Technically, our assessment of the various remote sensing platforms utilized show that satellite imagery or derived products (such as land cover or land use maps derived from multispectral data or elevation models derived from radar data) are the most highly utilized remotely sensed derived products, though other sources such as aerial platforms or UAVs may be used in conjunction (Table 3). Most often studies will use only satellite imagery (70% of the studies surveyed in this work), but when analyzing the corpus for the number of platforms used, those that have utilized two kinds of remote sensing products most often combine aerial imagery with satellite imagery [10,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32], though two studies combine satellite imagery with aerial LiDAR. For example, Ossola & Hopton [33] discuss the use of multi-temporal LiDAR to quantify urban tree loss; Vermeulen et al [34] incorporate a LiDAR DEM in a geoarcheological assessment, Ning et al [35] combined satellite and UAV imagery to assess land use change in China, Vermeulen et al [34] utilized a combination of satellite, aerial, and UAV imagery, as well as imagery obtained with a helikite.…”

“…Eleven studies returned in our search focus on the use of remote sensing to analyze past human environmental interactions or for studying archeological sites [23,24,28,36,[93][94][95][96][97]. Some studies use remote sensing and other methods for past human occupation and landscape reconstruction in deserts [24,97], for determining historical land use dynamics [96], for identifying trends in past urban growth [23,34], settlement distribution and seasonal flooding [95], or differentiating modern vs. ancient agricultural terraces [76]. A series of studies by Lombardo et al [28,93,94] used satellite imagery to identify paleo-structures to assess how environmental conditions influenced human settlement and societal development [94] and how geoecology influenced social complexity [28] to help inform future conservation and development [93].…”

“…Many of these studies have implications for, or methodology that is transferable to, modern human-environmental systems or HEI studies. Many of these studies incorporate satellite radar data alongside other satellite or aerial data types (Table 5) and the frequency of such applications has dramatically increased following the launch of SRTM data and more recently with the proliferation of UAS data [24,[93][94][95][96][97]. Given the importance of archeological sites to a holistic understanding of past or long-term trends in HEI, it is important to plan for future impacts of sea level rise near archeological sites by using technologies such as remote sensing to document sites [36].…”