Assessment of erosion dynamics on Marsa Matruh coast, western Egypt, using GIS and RS techniques

Abstract EN

The study area is a part of the north-west coast of the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt which extends to the west of Matrouh City for 15 km from Umm El-Rakham to Al Assi head.

This region is characterised by a diversity of coastal landforms such as heads, bays, sand dunes, sharms, and others.

Since some parts of this area has been subjected to severe erosion, the prevailing morphologic variables affecting the coastal landforms have been studied.

The results confirmed the effective role played by the waves and the longshore currents in the development of the nearshore, foreshore and backshore, whereas the effect of wind is observed in the sand dunes area.

Remote sensing and geographic information systems methods have been used for detecting the changes in the coastal landforms, and in order to monitor these changes, two Landsat images separated by 33 years have been used.

The results showed that the nearshore zone and the shore line are the areas subjected to the risk of erosion by the strength and speed of the shore currents.

The change in land cover has also been observed in the backshore area.

By comparing the tow DEMs with interval of 11 years, some landforms showed vertical changes especially sand dunes and Sharm areas.