Abstract
In light of the national project for rehabilitation and the lining of the exposed irrigation canals which is currently under implementation all over Egypt, a field study is introduced to assess the technical, and environmental expected impacts that must be achieved in such a national project. In arid and semi-arid regions, with permeable soils like Egypt, water seeps significantly through the exposed canals cross-sections, in addition to the quantities lost by evaporation under high temperatures. Saving such tangible quantities of water became the most important goal that can be achieved to solve the problematic situation of irrigation water shortage that faces Egypt nowadays. This study is a field attempt to estimate the transmission losses in the El-Sont canal in Middle Egypt (Assuit Governorate) as a representative open channel for a specific type of soil, climate, topography, and beneficiary’s lifestyle. Using the recommended equations developed by the most popular reviewed researchers, the conveyance and transmission losses for the understudy El-Sont canal, and its off-taking canals were calculated and evaluated to be about 248628 m3/day, i.e., more than 39.54 Mm3/year. That big quantity of saved or recovered water can be used for reclamation and irrigation of about five thousand new acres in the nearby area. The study and the field trips, visits, and the personal direct communication with the farmers and beneficiaries proved that the project had responded to their hopes for an improved living standard, health, in addition to the environmental situation for all the Egyptian countryside.
Highlights
In Egypt, open channels are the major conveyance system of irrigation water from its sources to where it may need through a total length exceeding 32000 km (El Gamal and Zaki, 2017)
The major types of losses in irrigation canals are the seepage losses through the canal sides and bed, the evaporation losses from the free surface of the canal top width, and the transpiration losses from grass and weeds that located at the side slope, bed of canals, or floating weeds
The seepage losses in the irrigation canals account for about 98.37% of the water conveyance losses, while approximately 0.3 % of the total stream is lost due to evaporation (Jadhav, 2014)
Summary
In Egypt, open channels are the major conveyance system of irrigation water from its sources to where it may need through a total length exceeding 32000 km (El Gamal and Zaki, 2017). This network was excavated in the sedimentary permeable soils and running in hot weather conditions. As a compatible scientific-technical role of the university, this field study was conducted on one of the under-rehabilitation process canals in the Assuit countryside in the Middle Egypt region, to be a representative case study. About the rehabilitation and environment, many field trips were carried out through which the environmental condition of the understudy canal and its off-takings surrounding areas were recorded. The recorded observations included all the basic services and infrastructure related to the rehabilitation national project which were evaluated to assess the gained positive needed impacts
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