Hope Irvine and Lima Assi

• Can the Past Help the Future? An Archaeological and Historical Approach to Analysing and Mitigating the Impacts of Climate Change and Desertification in Southern Morocco
• BSc Hons Archaeology / BA Hons History

This project will use an interdisciplinary archaeological and historical approach to study long-term desertification in Southern Morocco, and how traditional water systems could be used to combat its impact. This project aims to achieve these objectives by using open-source digital mapping technologies to address COP26’s SDGs 6 (clean water) and 15 (life on land, including desertification).

Farmland environments in the Ourzazate region are at risk from desertification due to drought induced by climate change. The survival of this unique landscape heritage is threatened; this project intends to assess whether this was a direct result of increasing abandonment of traditional water management systems, such as canals and khettaras.

This project aims to achieve these objectives using a range of data. These include historic French maps from 1964-1974, declassified HEXAGON spy satellite imagery (1971-1986), and open-source Google Earth imagery from 1984-2022.  Analysing these sources will reveal how different water management systems affect desertification, and how desertification has occurred over the period of fifty years.

Funding source: Newcastle University

Project supervisor: Dr Louise Rayne