The Lake Manzala of Egypt: An ambiguous future

The Lake Manzala of Egypt has a relatively short history and its future, however, is uncertain. The lake which was the biggest coastal wetland along the Mediterranean Coast is moving toward its disappearance by two opposite forces, one of them is the shrinking of the water body by siltation of sediments coming from agricultural lands and the abundance of weeds and swamp vegetation as well as the drying practices for agriculture, whereas the other force incorporates the removal of the coastal sand bar separating the lake from the Mediterranean Sea by erosion, which should eventually lead to the conversion of the lake into a coastal embayment instead of being a closed coastal lagoon. The study provided a spatiotemporal change analysis of the lake using remotely sensed data.