The Shrinking Toshka Lakes in the Google Earth Images

Abstract

Toshka Lakes are lakes artificially created in the Sahara Desert of Egypt, by the water of the Nile, conveyed from the Nasser Lake through a canal in the Toshka Depression. From space, astronauts noticed the growing of a first lake, the easternmost one, in 1998. Then additional lakes grew in succession due west, the westernmost one between 2000 and 2001. The pictures of the Toshka Lakes taken by the crews of space missions and the satellite imagery can show the evolution of them. From 2006, the lakes started shrinking rapidly. The recent images, among them those of Google Earth, display that the surface of the lakes is strongly reduced and some of them entirely dried out.