Environmental change at the desert margin: 20th century instrumental records and the recent palaeolimnology of Lake Qarun, Middle Egypt.
by
Roger J. Flower
Environmental Change Research Centre, University College London
Coauthors: Catherine E. Stickley (Environmental Change Research Centre, University College London), Ian Hawkes (Department of Geography, Lancaster University), Neil Rose (Environmental Change Research Centre, University College London), Sylvia Peglar (Botanical Institute, University of Bergen), Peter G. Appleby (Department of Thoretical Mathmetics and Applied Physics, University of Liverpool)

Encouraging the use of palaeoecological techniques in developing countries can help assess the extent and pace of environmental change in ways that would otherwise be unavailable. North Africa is one such region where development has profoundly affected natural wetland and shallow lakes, especially during the 20th century. In Egypt however recent environmental change problems are the culmination of more than 5000 years of human exploitation of water resources (Butzer, 1976).One Egyptian lake currently experiencing rapid chemical and biological change is Lake Qarun in the Faiyum depression at the margin of the Great Western Desert. The depression is intensively agricultural and has been occupied for at least the past 7,000 years during which time the lake has experienced major changes in level (Hassan 1986). Furthermore this lake lies on the PEP II transect... Recent environmental change records for Lake Qarun are explored by using contemporary sediment core analysis techniques as well as available intrumental data. A sediment chronology for the 20th century period is obtained using radiometric and other methods. The quality of sedimentary diatom, ostracod and formainiferan records are assessed and used inter alia to infer past salinity changes. Vegetation changes beyond the lake are inferred from pollen analysis and contamination by atmospheric pollution is assessed by analysis of fossil fuel combustion particulates in the sediment. The recent diatom record is heavily baised towards freshwater conditions by the inclusion of re-worked early Holocene lacustrine deposites. The initial results nevertheless indicate that while climatic change undoublely plays a major role, landscape management for agriculture cannot be ingored as a major driver of environmental change in the Faiyum region.

http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/ecrc/cassar.htm

Date received: May 14, 2001

Copyright © 2001 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cahi-90.