On the drying trends over Egypt using Harmonic Analysis of the Enhanced Vegetation Index

Consecutive warm years has been recently experienced during the (January-June) periods, namely, 2016, 2017, 2015 and 2018. Reduction of food production is one of the biggest impacts of rising temperatures and the resulting drought in arid and semi-arid regions. Northern Africa and southern Europe has been experiencing increased drought patterns and underground water shortage has been an issue affecting cropland coverage and productivity . To investigate the connection between global warming and Egypt cropland coverage changes, we used the MODIS enhanced vegetation index (EVI) and land cover type dataset as an indicators of this drying trend over Egypt the past 20 years. We validated the matching relationship between high EVI regions and cropland coverage. Harmonic analysis model are fitted to the historical time-series of EVI during 2000-2017, to extrapolate for different regions to provide future scenarios of cropland coverage projection (increase, decrease, stable) based on historical variations and trends. We aim to assess the predictive power of EVI for the ecosystems in this region in coherence with the prolonged observed drought conditions. The result shows the increase of cropland coverage in two wings of the Nile Delta watershed and decrease trend of EVI of the central region of the Delta.