GIS and Remote Sensing applications for abandoned quarries rehabilitation: A case study in the Akreuch Region, Rabat, Morocco.

Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing techniques are increasingly widely used tools in urban and environmental studies and help making decision in land-use planning. Generally, such projects involve a large amount of spatial data derived from several sources and provided in different formats. As an urban project, abandoned quarries rehabilitation requires a suitability evaluation based on geo-environmental information. This evaluation incorporates topography, soil characteristics, water resources and socioeconomic constraints. The diversity of parameters shows the complexity of the issue and underlines the necessity of developing a methodology supporting decision makers in choosing the most appropriate and optimal solution for quarries reuse. Akreuch quarries have been abandoned for at least 8 years without any plan of rehabilitation or restoration and they are today subject to various forms of degradation processes. In this sense, this paper addresses quarries rehabilitation using GIS and Remote Sensing approaches combined with multi-criteria analysis. Four major categories were studied offering different scenarios of rehabilitation. It comes to: Construction, Landfill, Revegetation and Waterbody. A multi-criteria analysis based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was performed taking into account different parameters and has revealed the appropriate rehabilitation alternative for each quarry. As a result, suitability maps were produced and attest the efficiency and the functionality of GIS and Remote Sensing in redevelopment projects.