Quantification of Sand Dune Movements in the South Western Part of Egypt, Using Remotely Sensed Data and GIS

Abstract

Sand dune movement is a hazardous phenomenon in Egypt and creates major threat on the existing land use and land cover as well as developmental plans. This paper studied the sand dune morphology and quantified the rate of sand dune movements and direction in a newly developed project in the southwest of Egypt. Two dates of satellite imageries were used to trace the Barchan dunes at various sites with different morphological properties to estimate the annual movement rate based on point to point geo-correlations. 149 dunes of the common sand dunes in the area of study including barchans and transverse dunes were studied to accurately determine their rate of movements, which ranged from 1.3 to 19.3 my-1. The direction of sand dune movements was mainly to the south and slightly southeast with range from 265 to 295 degrees. The quantification of sand dune movement and direction has, indeed, enabled to determine the major threat on the exiting land use and land cover as well as the newly developmental projects.