1 Geo - Environmental Estimation of Land Use Changes 2 and Its Effects on Egyptian Temples at Luxor City 3

Over the years, the Egyptian temples at Luxor city have been intensely investigated, but 18 most of these studies just focused on the classical sides of the archaeological and historical 19 descriptions. Many of the environmental problems are inevitable results of the unplanned urban 20 crawling around the monuments temples. This paper aims at assessing the environmental changes 21 around some temples of Luxor City using Remote sensing and GIS techniques. In particular, a 22 historical database made up of Corona and Landsat TM data have been investigated along with the 23 new acquisitions of Quickbird2 and Sentinel2. Results from our investigation highlighted rapid 24 changes in urban and agricultural areas, which adversely affected the Egyptian monumental 25 temples causing serious degradation phenomena. Using the information obtained from our 26 RS&GIS based analysis, mitigation strategies have been also identified for supporting the 27 preservation of the archaeological area. 28