Management of Lake Qaroun for salinity control

The various management options for the control of salinity in Lake Qaroun, deal mainly with dividing the lake into a series of compartments separated by dams, together with the construction of regional evaporation ponds. To a nalyse possible scenarios of lake management and develop environmentally ac ceptable solutions to the problem of salt accumulation in the lake, informa tion collected on-site was used in a lake routing model (LQR). The most sui table option was to divide Lake Qaroun into two compartments (35% and 65% o f the lake area). The smaller compartment, at the east end of the lake, wou ld contain relatively fresh water, at a salinity of 13.3 dS m(-1), and a wa ter level of -43.79 +/- 0.25 m. The other compartment, at the west end of t he lake, would contain saline water, at a salinity of 83.1 dS m(-1), and a water level of -44.38 +/- 0.26 m. The salinity of the latter could be effec tively reduced by using the regional evaporation ponds (6 km(2) in area) no rth of the lake. The annual salt load entering the evaporation ponds is cur rently estimated to be 620,000 tonnes. Such an annual salt load removal fro m the saline compartment would reduce its salinity from 83.1 dS m(-1) to 72 .2 dS m(-1).