## 1 Introduction
As explained below, these conditions can be prompted by natural or anthropic events, such as climate change or water management policies. Identifying and monitoring water bodies has been a common practice in disciplines such as geography or geology, and one of these studies can be used as a starting point for this research. A study group from the University of North Carolina explored the impact of climate- and politics-related events on some artificial lakes of present-day Iraq, with a specific focus on the Haditha and Mosul reservoirs [27]. Using remote sensing data, they explored lake-surface changes from their formation in 1985 and 1986 to 2016. The result was a better understanding of how a combination of anthropic and natural events brought drastic changes in the lake-surface areas over the last 30 years. Sudden changes,  
Figure 3: (**a**) CORONA satellite image of Kifrin before the excavations (December 1967). (**b**) HR image of Kifrin from Bing Maps, with part of the site emerged from the waters (2011). registered for the years 1991, 2001, 2009, 2015, were mostly linked to water management policies tied to political events (e.g., the series of conflicts from the Iraq-Iran war to the ISIS invasion, [27], pp. 271-273). On the other hand, prolonged years with low water level were linked to a reduction in precipitation along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, coupled with the number of dams upstream of each reservoir. A more widespread drought was registered in the area since 1999, with a peak in 2009, which in turn affected the water level of the reservoirs [4] (pp. 58,59), [27] (pp. 273-276), [28] (pp. 270-276). Usually, remote sensing research focused on studying submerged archaeological features relies on methods which are difficult to apply in countries such as Syria and Iraq, e.g., airborne laser remote sensing [29] or sonar technologies mounted on boats [30,31]. In the Near East, research has focused mainly on mapping relict water features [32, 33, 34, 35, 36] or used coarser-resolution imagery that does not allow for immediate validation of the results [37,38]. Instead, cultural heritage monitoring using remote sensing techniques focused mainly on looting and destruction caused by conflicts [39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46] (the EAMENA project also released an online database with the location and types of damage affecting archaeological heritage, available at [[http://eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk/](http://eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk/)]([http://eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk/](http://eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk/)) (last accessed on 14 December 2020). On the other hand, other studies that focused on water body detection or temporal change mapping [47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52] were never linked to archaeological heritage research, even if we now know that sites can be affected by these phenomena as well (on this topic, using the example of the Delmej reservoir in southern Iraq see [PERSON] et al., 2018 [21], pp. 12-15; on temporal change detection for mapping damage to archaeological sites caused by human activities but not focused on dam construction, see also [PERSON] et al., 2020 [53]). For these reasons, the aims of this paper were:  
* To evaluate whether more archaeological sites than the two mentioned before are affected by the cycles of water retraction;
* To establish a systematic and easy-to-reproduce methodology for the mapping and monitoring of these events over a long time span, on an annual basis. The selected time span will cover from the completion of the dams to the present day, but the method could be adapted to different situations;
* To evaluate the impact of the interannual variability of the water level and its impact on the archaeological sites, by monitoring, monthly, over a single year. The monthly analysis was carried out over the year 2018, which was chosen because a sharp lowering of the water level was registered in all the three reservoirs.