Climate change impact on El-Burullus lake salinizaton process

Abstract

EL-Burullus lagoon is a brackish water coastal lake on the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt. Lake ecosystem has been deteriorated since Aswan High Dam construction, 1965. Lake salinity has been suffered from sig- nificant decrease due to excess unregulated drainage water effluent into the lake, which affected the lake flora and fauna. This study presents a modeling study to investigate the impact of climate change on salinization process in the lake. A calibrated two-dimensional depth-averaged mass transport model with finite volume in dicretization is used to simulate salinity distribution under two IPCC climate change scenarios (SRES B1 and SRES A2). Although results reveal with increase salinity values to double the current values, they are still obviously lower than those before constructing Aswan High Dam. A dynamic discharge system is proposed to re-originate lake’s salinity under climate change conditions. KeyWords: