Journal of Marine Science: Research & Development
Open Access

Abstract

Currently the amount of sediment in Lake Naser (LN) formed upstream (US) of Aswan High Dam (AHD) is about 6 billion cubic meter. The finer sediments exist near to the dam in the Egypt side of LN while most of the courser sediments were accumulated within 150 km of LN is the Sudan Side. Before the construction of Grand Renaissance Ethiopian Dam (GERD) the accumulated sediment in LN was increasing progressively. This situation will differ completely after the completion of GERD construction and becomes in active operation. In all cases of operations, a significant amount of sediment will be retained US of GERD and the released amount of sediment to the downstream (DS) side will be smaller or negligible compared to the absence of GERD. Assuming that the dam will be completed according to the announced height and storage capacity and assuming that the dam will be used only for power generation, the released water to the DS will be mostly clear water or water with little sediment contents. This hungry water will change the morphology of the river reaches DS of GERD including the sediment redistribution of the sediment accumulated within LN. One of the possible scenarios is part of this sediment will move from Sudan side to Egypt side of the lake with the possibility of moving towards the AHD. The different scenarios resulting from using numerical simulations with different flow conditions and suspended sediment load ranging from maximum to minimum possible situations will be discussed. Also, the possible utilization strategies of the sediment will be discussed.

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