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| Lower Nile River, Egypt |
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Underlying Science When it was completed in 1971, the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser were considered one of the engineering marvels of the world. The lake functions as a water reservoir and allows Egypt to maintain high agricultural and industrial productivity in the Nile Valley despite flood and drought cycles. Lake levels fluctuated in the 1980s and 1990s in response to regional cycles of drought and monsoons. Today, the Egyptian government has broken ground on new irrigation projects that will further transform the Egyptian landscape. Since late 1998, four new lakes have been flooded in the Toshka depression (the New Valley Project) west of Lake Nasser . Soon, the Toshka depression will support agriculture and industry, and expand the amount of Egypt’s arable land . Application The images of the New Valley Project and the rest of the lower Nile can be used as a time series to demonstrate changes over time. Astronauts have photographed the Nile and Lake Nasser since 1965, and the filling of the Toshka depression since late 1998. Since November 1998, the area of the lakes has grown from roughly 250 km2 (November 1998) to about 1300 km2 (February 2000). We anticipate seeing the extents of these lakes fluctuate with changes in annual rainfall annual wet-dry seasons, and future development in the New Valley. Monitoring watershed changes from space provides a useful and efficient way to demonstrate changes over a large area and communicate impacts to government and scientific user groups. Analyses from these images can be used as contributing or stand-alone data for regional impacts of climate shifts and continued development in the New Valley. Related References Evans, C., Robinson, J. and Stern, R., 2000. NASA Astronaut Observations of Egyptian Water Projects, presented at the International Conference on the Western Desert, Cairo, Egypt, Jan 17-20, 2000. Evans, C.; Robinson, J., Scott, J; Stern, R.; Thurmond, A; Abdelsalam, M., 2000. Egypt’s new reservoirs: a 35-year time series of land and water changes along the lower Nile, American Geophysical Union |
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