Author(s)

Mahmoud Abd El-Kawy Zahran¹, Yasser Ahmed El-Amier^1*, Abdelhamid Ahmed Elnaggar², Hoda Abd El-Azim Mohamed³, Muhammad Abd El-Hady El-Alfy³

¹Botany Department, Faculty of Science, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt.
²Soils Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt.
³Marine Pollution Department, National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Suez, Egypt.

Contamination with heavy metals is one of the most serious problems in the aquatic environments. In Egypt, Manzala Lake is suffering from this problem. The objective of this work was to assess heavy metals pollutants and their spatial distribution in Manzala Lake using GIS technique. Georeferenced water and sediment samples were randomly collected from the lake. The detected heavy metals were: Fe, Pb, Cu, Cd, Cr, Zn and Co. The obtained results indicated that the highest concentrations of heavy metals were observed in the northeastern and the southern parts of the lake nearby drains. This could be attributed to industrial, agricultural and municipal wastes coming through the drains especially Bahr El-Baqar drain and the industrial wastes coming from Port Said drains. From the geo-accumulation index, it was noticed that the lake is more polluted with cadmium and lead in the hydrosoils samples. All metals in water are within the EPA standard limit except for cadmium. Geostatistics provides effective methods to quantify the contaminated waters and sediments which support decision-making about redevelopment scenarios or remediation techniques.

Manzala Lake, Heavy Metals, Indices, Pollution, GIS

Zahran, M. , El-Amier, Y. , Elnaggar, A. , Mohamed, H. and El-Alfy, M. (2015) Assessment and Distribution of Heavy Metals Pollutants in Manzala Lake, Egypt. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 3, 107-122. doi: 10.4236/gep.2015.36017.