Assessment of groundwater resources in Siwa Oasis, Western Desert, Egypt

Noha H Moghazy,Jagath J Kaluarachchi

doi:10.1016/j.aej.2019.12.018

Abstract

One of the major challenges facing Egypt is limited water resources associated with rapid increase in population. In 1960s, Egyptian government started to use groundwater from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS) in the Western Desert to expand agricultural sector. Siwa Oasis is the focus of this study to assess the efficiency of groundwater use and corresponding impacts from 1980 to 2012. Results show that from 1980 to 1998, withdrawal from poorly designed wells increased rapidly causing an increase in excess water about 336%. The increase of excess water with the usage of poor drainage produced lakes. Remote Sensing showed in 2000, there were 21,348 acres of lakes with an increase of 89% since 1987 due to unmanaged withdrawal. After management intervention, excess water decreased about 94.7% from 1998 to 2012 causing a decrease in lakes area by 24%. Groundwater electrical conductivity (EC) increased from 4.5 to 10.5 ds/m in 1996 and 2013, respectively. Yields of olives and date palms decreased about 46% and 55%, respectively from 2000 to 2011 resulting in net revenue decrease of more than 60%. Results show that salinity has a strong negative correlation with yield and net revenue. Findings showed the importance of developing a meaningful groundwater resources management plan for Siwa region.

Highlights

The primary source of water in Egypt is the Nile River which provides 55.5 billion m3 annually since the agreement between Egypt and Sudan in 1959 [1,2]
Due to the use of high groundwater salinity from Post Nubian Aquifer (PNA), we found that 20% is a good estimate as recommended by Abdrabbo et al [33]
Total water use is estimated, which is the sum of crop water irrigation and domestic water use

Summary

Introduction

The primary source of water in Egypt is the Nile River which provides 55.5 billion m3 annually since the agreement between Egypt and Sudan in 1959 [1,2]. This amount represents 94% of all renewable water resources in Egypt [3]. Egypt’s climate is arid with an average annual rainfall of 18 mm [1]. Egypt’s population has experienced rapid growth; an increase of 66 million to 96 million between 2002 and 2018, respectively [4] with an average increase of 2.7% annually. The total renewable water resources per capita decreased to 570 m3/year/capita in

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Conclusion