Coastal Environmental Changes Along the North Western Coast of Egypt Case Study from Alexandria to El Alamein Coast
Abstract: The present paper aims at highlighting the urban development, fishing activities, tourism, industrial development and agricultural activities that affect delicate and valuable coastal ecosystems. A supervised classification, post-classification, change detection techniques were applied to Land sat images acquired in 1991 and 2007, respectively, to map land cover changes along the north-western coast of Egypt, from Alexandria to El Alamein. A supervised classification was carried out on the six reflective bands for the two images individually with the aid of true ground data. The truthful ground information, collected during field trips using ancillary data, visual interpretation and experts’ knowledge of the area using GIS, further refined the classification results. Post-classification change detection technique was used to produce image through cross-tabulation. Changes among different land cover classes were assessed. During the study period, a very severe land cover change has taken place as a result of agricultural and tourist development projects. These shoreline and land cover changes led to modifications of the environmental properties.