Assessment of shoreline stability and solidity for future investment plans at Ras El-Bar Resort (EGYPT).

Ali, Walaa A.; Kaiser, Mona F.; Kholief, Suzan; El-Tahan, Maysara

doi:10.21608/ejabf.2017.2377

Assessment of shoreline stability and solidity for future investment plans at Ras El-Bar Resort (EGYPT).

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt.

² National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (NIOF), Alexandria, Egypt

³ Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt

10.21608/ejabf.2017.2377

Abstract

Ras El-Bar resort located in the northeastern Egyptian Nile Delta coast includes a very active sandy beach coastline, which extends roughly 12 km west of Damietta Nile branch. Erosion along the coast of Ras El-Bar resort has been mitigated by constructing a series of coastal engineering structures that include jetties, groins, seawalls and detached breakwaters. The Project of protecting Ras El-bar resort started early in 1941 and ended in 2010 and aimed to decrease the continuous erosion and protecting the investments at the Ras El-bar resort. Studying shore line change at this region is important in making the development plan of protection works along the Egyptian northeastern coast by evaluating the effect of constructed detached breakwaters on shoreline. The purpose of this paper is to calculate the change detection rate of Ras El-bar shoreline at the last 15 years (2000-2015) and to evaluate the effect of basaltic stones and dollos blocks that constructed to re-protect the western jetty and fanar area by mitigating beach erosion. Besides, this study aimed to determine the degree of shoreline stability and solidity for future investment plans. Remote Sensing (RS) technique was used as a low cost method to Evaluate the morphologic changes (erosion/accretion patterns) from analysing Landsat-8, spot4, ETM+, and Egypt sat satellite images that acquired in the period from (2000-2015) to get the shoreline vector position of each date year. It was found that the shoreline change rate at Ras El-Bar resort at present study in the period from 2000-2015 has reached an erosion rate of (-0.1:-1.1m/yr) and a rate of accretion that reached to (+0.2:+4m/yr) at maximum. These rates values consider as the ideal values for stable beach and enabled us to give a clear conclusion that Ras El-Bar's beaches behind the detached breakwaters are stable and no need for future protection in the near future. Therefore, this study did not examine the area hydrodynamiclly because there is no need for that, since the message given by the stable beach for a long time is a strong testament refers to a balance of bilateral dimensions within the depths of coastal zone. As long as the beach is stable, the surf zone is stable.

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