Rapidly Shrinking Dead Sea Urgently Needs Infusion of 0.9 km~3/a from Planned Red-Sea Channel: Implication for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development

摘要

The Dead Sea has been experiencing a severe drop in level since 1978 with an average of 0.7 m/a due to the accelerating water consumption in its catchment and stood in 2008 at -420 m. In this study, a terrain model of the surface area and water volume of the Dead Sea was developed from the SRTM data using ArcGIS. The model shows that the lake shrinks on average by 4 km~2/a in area and by 0.47 km~3/a in volume, amounting to a cumulative loss of 14 km~3 in the last 30 years. The receding level leaves almost annually shoreline terraces recorded here for the first time by DGPS field surveys. The terrace altitudes were correlated among the different profiles and dated to specific years of the lake level regression, illustrating the tight correlation between the morphology of the terrace sequence and the receding lake level. Our volume-level model and previous work on groundwater inflow suggest that the projected Dead Sea–Red Sea channel must have a carrying capacity of >0.9 km~3/a in order to slowly re-fill the lake to its former level. The channel will also exploit the net altitude of 400 m to produce hydro-energy and create a sustainable system of electricity generation and freshwater production by desalinization. Moreover, such a channel will maintain tourism and potash industry of the Dead Sea and reduce the natural hazard caused by the lake recession.