Change Detection in the Water Bodies of Burullus Lake, Northern Nile Delta, Egypt, Using RS/GIS

Abstract

The Egyptian coastal lakes have changes in the water bodies due to the severe anthropogenic activities. In this paper, the Burullus Lake was selected as a case study. It is the second largest of the Egyptian northern coastal lakes along the Mediterranean coast. It has economic and environmental impacts on the nearby society of Kafr El-Sheikh, Egypt. ERDAS IMAGINE and ArcGIS software are used in this study for processing of the images and managing the database of each image. Different classification techniques are tested, the results showed that the maximum likelihood supervised classification technique was more accurate to monitor changes in the water bodies of the Lake. The method is applied to subsets of the Landsat TM, ETM+ and OLI/TIRS images acquired on 1984, 1990, 1998, 2003 and 2015, respectively. Five classes are detected including sea water, lake water, floating vegetation, sand bar and urban, and agriculture land. The results showed that the water bodies of the lake decreased by 44.97% (14,503.68ha), while floating vegetation area increased mostly by the same amount during the period from 1984 to 2015. This increase in floating vegetation is mainly due to discharging of agriculture wastes and municipal wastes in the lake without adequate treatment. The sea water has minor changes during the period of study. The agriculture area increased by 45.52% (10,529.02ha), while the sand bar and urban area decreased mostly by the same amount during the period from 1984 to 2015. Statistical models were developed using statistical tools. The models indicated that the water bodies of the lake will be reduced by 58.95% (19,013.42ha) in 2030. The results of the present study shall help the decision-makers to take the necessary measures to reduce the environmental risk and maintain the lake in order to sustain the lake water area against further reduction.