Impact of human interventions and coastal processes along the Nile Delta coast, Egypt during the past twenty-five years

The coastal zone of the Nile Delta lodges highly populated cities (e.g. Alexandria, Port Said) together with small towns and villages. It represents the major industrial, agricultural, and economic resource of the country. The area has been subjected to extensive and excessive unplanned developmental projects to foster the economic status of the local communities that, however, negatively impacted both land use and land cover characteristics. Satellite images were processed to identify the dominant land use/cover classes (from 1990 to 2014) and GIS techniques spatially analyzed and quantified the rate of changes. Five dominant classes were identified and their changes monitored against the unprecedented human activities. Results demonstrated a significant rate of land forms transformation within the last 25 years, in favor of developing of fish farming (+13%) and urban (+22%). Such development of these land use classes was unfortunately at the expense of the agricultural land (−15%), coastal dune and barren land (−13%) and water bodies (−7%). In addition, the coastal processes have made significant changes in the shoreline creating areas of erosion (maximum of 24–36 m/year) and others of accretion (a total accreted area of 3.14 km2) with an overall retreat of 2.7 km2 along the shoreline. The expected changes in climate and sea level rise will worsen the erosion rate and the general status of the coastal zone. Based on the IPCC scenarios (i.e. the 59 cm sea level rise by the end of this century) and the proposed land subsidence (2.5 mm/year), one fifth of the Nile Delta will be seriously vulnerable to inundation.