Nile Delta

Case Study - Landform:How does it affect people?How do people affect it?

How is it Managed?

Location: Where is it?

Egypt

Mouth of Nile

Mediterranean Sea

North of Cairo

What is it Like?

Fan or arcuate shape

Flat and low lying land

Small salty lagoon / lakes

River splits into distibutaries

Swampy marshes

How was it made?

Made of silt (alluvium)

Weak tides mean the silt is not washed away

The delta gradually build up and out to sea

Inland parts become drier

Distributaries spread to the edges

How did the DELTA landform affect people’s activities?

Fertile farmland

Every year the river flooded so crops could grow

Every year more silt deposited

The land stayed fertile

Very densely populated

But Canopus, along with other cities on the stretch of coast where five branches of the Nile once met the Mediterranean sea, has long since been lost -- drowned by seismic activity coupled with a neglect of sea defences.

The silt could be made into mud bricks for building

How have people affected the DELTA (landform)?

1970 Aswan Dam built

River no longer floods and

silt no longer deposited

The river used to deposit 120 million tonnes of silt onto the delta each year.

Now it is only 50 million tonnes because the rest is trapped at the Aswan Dam.

So now the delta is being eroded by the sea at up to 30 metres a year.

And with Global Warming causing sea level to rise the delta is even more at risk.

In the next 50 years, Egypt’s coastal zone, home to more than 40 percent of the population, stands to be severely damaged by

flooding,

groundwater salinity and erosion

resulting from rising sea levels associated with Global Warming.

Such a rise could potentially create as many as 14 million internally displaced persons

With about 40 percent of all Egyptian industry located within the delta area

In the fishing village of El-Burg there is an enormous cement levee which was built six years ago to save the village from being sucked into the sea.

The delta is sinking at 5mms per year.

How is it being managed?

A seawall defence to stop the Nile Delta being eroded by the sea.