GEOMORPHOLOGICAL STUDY USING GIS TECHNIQUE OF EL-BURULLUS COASTAL AREA, EGYPT

Abstract

Nile Delta coastal area including El-Burullus headland has experienced to face significant erosion in some local parts. The temporal and spatial geomorphological variations due to coastal processing and establishment of shore protection structures along El-Burullus coastal area were investigated in two ways. The first way is to study the stretches surf, breaker and offshore zones as perpendicular to the shoreline and the second way is to focus on three regions of interest along the shoreline (El-Burullus lake outlet, Balteem beach, and Kitchener drain outlet). Geostatistical Analyst model was used as advanced GIS technique to interpolate the data gathered from field campaigns and laboratory work. The results of grain size analyses of the sediments indicated fine sand is the dominant size in surf (0.16 mm) and breaker (0.15 mm) zones, while very find sand is in offshore (0.11 mm) zone. The sediment sorting in the three zones is recognized as moderately well sorted. Certainly, the moderately sorted sites have a mixing between indigenous and allochthonous sands. Variation of depth during the two successive years 2015 and 2013 was used as indicator of coastal processing in this area to identify the sites of erosion and accretion. The depth indicator revealed that the majority of the coastal area of El-Burullus is in erosion status with little accretion sites. Texture characteristics of sediments were used to recognize the depositional environments in the three interested areas. The dominant finer sand can attributed to deposition at low energy condition. Sorting investigation revealed that indigenous sediments were detected.