PRELIMINARY LITHOFACIES ANALYSIS OF HOLOCENE SEDIMENTS IN WADI EL-NATRUN LAKES, WESTERN NILE DELTA, EGYPT

Understanding the Holocene environmental and climatic changes in the area around the Nile Delta and how they correlate with human occupation patterns can provide valuable information on natural changes in the climatic system and modern environmental dynamics in addition to enabling the prediction of future climatic trends. There are limited high-resolution studies carried out on the desert regions of the Nile, even though the Nile has been a prosperous record of interaction between civilizations, desert, and the river system over a prolonged period of time. Two cores have been recovered from the vicinity of two lakes in the Wadi El-Natrun area, western Nile Delta, Egypt. Samples were subjected to XRF analysis at 5 cm intervals. Preliminary results indicate a major shift in the concentration of key elements like silicon (Si), calcium (Ca), iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg), potassium (K), and aluminum (Al) indicating pronounced lithofacies changes throughout the studied cores. These changes are related to the combined effects of changing climate and the subsequent change in the depositional environment. Pending carbon-14 dating results will enable the determination of exactly when such lithofacies shifts happened and possibly linking them to known global paleoclimatic events. These data pave the way for a more wholistic understanding of the Holocene climate and environment of the Nile Delta region.