Northern Kordofan Research Articles

English

Sixteen genotypes of guar were evaluated at five sites in Northern Kordofan State, Sudan in 1998/1999 rainy season. A 4×4 partially balanced lattice design with three replicates was used. Data were collected on yield and yield related characters. Genotypic and phenotypic correlations among these traits were determined. Days to 50% flowering was positively and significantly correlated with days to maturity at four locations. This indicates that days taken to maturity can be predicted by days taken to flowering. Seed yield per plant had significant positive phenotypic and genotypic correlations with number of fruiting nodes/main stem and number of reproductive branches per plant at three locations; number of pods per branch, number of pods per plant and number of seeds per pod at two locations. On the other hand, seed yield per plant had significant negative phenotypic and genotypic association with days to 50% flowering at two sites, height to first pod at one location. Hence, breeding for high yielding guar cultivar can be made through selection for early flowering, low height to first pod, numerous reproductive branches and fruiting nodes per main stem, and high number of pods per plant and seeds per pod.   Key words: Guar, Cyamopsis tetragonoloba, correlations, selection, Sudan.

Mathematical Modeling of Bara Groundwater System Central Sudan

Groundwater has proved to be a major resource in Northern Kordofan State (NKS) in the development plans of water supply, irrigation as well as industrial sectors. Drinking water supply in the state relies on groundwater for more than 65% of the total consumption. In Bara Basin, the Cretaceous sediments extend underlying the Umm Ruwaba sediments, which are tapped by Abu Tenetin and Umm Sayala boreholes at the northern periphery of the Bara Basin (RRI, 1990). The main purpose of the modeling exercise was to assess the potential of the aquifer to satisfy the Bara well field needs. This designed model has predicted the possible drawdown for 25 years due to planned groundwater development in the project area. Other specific objectives were achieved such as: water balance calculation of the Bara basin (i.e. recharge from rainfall, leakage between upper, middle and lower aquifers, flow across the boundaries of the aquifers, water released from storage in the main aquifer due to heavy pumping), in addition to the prediction of the reactions of the hydraulic system due to groundwater withdrawal, and final determination of the safe yield of the basin.

Palaeomagnetism of the permo/carboniferous (280 Ma) Jebel Nehoud ring complex, Kordofan, Central Sudan

Palaeogeographic reconstructions of Pangaea during Permian times, based on palaeomagnetic data, result in major overlaps between Gondwana and Laurasia when choosing a Wegener type configuration (Pangaea A1 or A2). In order to reduce these overlaps, several alternative reconstructions for Pangaea have been proposed whereby Gondwana is shifted towards the east with respect to Laurasia (Pangaea B and Pangaea C). Although these configurations are perfectly compatible with the palaeomagnetic data set, they are not accepted by the majority of the earth science community. Gondwana's palaeomagnetic data set is of rather low quality and often hampered by large uncertainties in rock age. The overlap of Laurasia and Gondwana, therefore, may be an artefact. Here we present new palaeomagnetic data for the radiometrically dated (280±2 Ma, single mineral, K–Ar) Jebel Nehoud ring complex, Northern Kordofan, Sudan. The majority of the samples studied show rather simple directional behavior. After removal of component A, pointing to the north with shallow inclinations and bearing great similarity to the direction of the present day Earth's magnetic field in the region, component B was identified at demagnetization temperatures above 380 °C. Maximum unblocking temperatures for component B reach 580 °C and only occasionally 650 °C or higher, suggesting magnetite and occasionally haematite as the principal carriers of component B. Component B is of single polarity and points towards the southeast with intermediate inclinations. The resulting overall mean south pole position based on eight sites is 40.8°S and 71.3°E ( k: 78.1; α 95: 6.0) and 46.5°S; 68.0°E when transferred into northwest African coordinates. Combining this new pole position with the highest quality data from Australia, South America and Africa results in a mean pole position at 37.3°S; 63.8°E ( N=11, k=84.5, α 95=5.0) in northwest African coordinates and removes some of the ambiguities in the Gondwana data set for the Early Permian. However, the palaeogeographic reconstruction of Gondwana on the basis of the new data, results in a major overlap with Laurasia when a Pangaea A2 configuration is chosen, whilst it is fully compatible with a Pangaea B type configuration.

Bibliography

Bibliography

On Trek in Kordofan, The Diaries of a British District Officer in the Sudan, 1931-1933

The life of a Colonial District Officer on trek has seldom been revealed in more detail than in Lea's journals from Kordofan, in the Western Sudan. Never intended for publication, these trek notes contain rare candour and informality, and give an unvarnished view of the land and people during a period of rapid social change. Though in many ways typical of the elite Sudan Political Service, Lea was most at home while on trek in the desert. Northern Kordofan, especially Dar al-Kababish, was then little known, and these notes therefore form an important record of the customs, economy and politics of the Arab and Nuba tribesmen who inhabited those regions.

Nonmarine Cretaceous palynology of northern Kordofan, Sudan, with notes on fossil Salviniales (water ferns)

A palynological investigation of 164 samples from 18 water wells in northern Kordofan, Sudan, enabled the recognition of five informal zones based on pollen and spore assemblages ranging in age from Albian to Maastrichtian. The youngest (late Campanian-Maastrichtian) assemblages are restricted to the Bagbag Basin, whereas Albian-Cenomanian (to Turonian) sediments are widespread to the east and west of the Bagbag area. Impressions of Salvinia floating leaves from outcrops of the upper Hamrat el Wuz Formation, western part of the study area, are among the oldest occurrences of this water fern and indicate a Campanian-Maastrichtian age for these sediments.

K-Ar dating of ring complexes and fault systems in Northern Kordofan, Sudan: evidence for independent magmatic and tectonic activity

From an area of brittle shearing and ring complexes in Northern Kordofan, Sudan 28 K-Ar ages were calculated to determine the geochronology of tectonic and magmatic events. The age results for deformational episodes are 560, 340 and 255 Ma, whereas alkaline magma was intruded at 280, 220 and 165 Ma. The incompatibility of age marks leads to the conclusion that magmatic and tectonic activity in this area have to be regarded as independent events. This holds true even when all dated intrusions from the entire region are compared with post-Pan-African continental tectonic features.

K-Ar dating of ring complexes and fault systems in Northern Kordofan, Sudan: evidence for independent magmatic and tectonic activity

K-Ar dating of ring complexes and fault systems in Northern Kordofan, Sudan: evidence for independent magmatic and tectonic activity

Deterioration of a sustainable agro-silvo-pastoral system in the Sudan: the gum gardens of Kordofan

The development and establishment of agroforestry systems is often suggested as a way to stabilize rural economies in developing countries [King, 1979]. At the same time, some traditional systems are being lost, due to an inability to protect the perennial or tree crop components of the system. These traditional systems and the forces that reinforce or destroy them should be carefully studied by those in the process of encouraging adoption of agroforestry systems in the developing world. The gum gardens of Western Sudan are a case in point.Acacia senegal (hashab) andAcacia seyal (talh) are the two major marketable gum-producing trees found in the western region of Sudan. TheAcacias are grown as part of an agro-silvo-pastoral system that has persisted for more than a hundred years in Kordofan Province, where 70% of Sudan's gum Arabic was once produced, as well as most of its grain and livestock products. After a lengthy drought lasting from 1979 to 1985 gum production in Sudan drastically decreased. It was reported that pest attacks and drought were major causal agents in the decline of gum production [Awouda, 1989; Sungar, 1986]. A survey executed in Northern Kordofan Province, starting in August of 1986, did uncover a great number of deadAcacias due to drought and pest attack, but from interviews with gum farmers we conclude that the decline in gum production is largely due to unfavorable socioeconomic relationships exacerbated by the drought, leading to the deterioration of the agroforestry system of production. An inability to get a fair price for gum at the local level and increasing emphasis on a cash economy led to the neglect of the tree components of the system. The gum gardens have long flourished with the intensive husbandry of small-scale farmers. Once these farmers were no longer able to care for them, the gum trees disappeared from the system, indicating that a lack of community stability can be fatal to even a well-developed agroforestry system.

Brittle shear deformation in northern Kordofan, Sudan: late carboniferous to triassic reactivation of precambrian fault systems

Analysis of folding and faulting in the basement of the Umm Badr and Sodiri areas of Northern Kordofan, Sudan, revealed the existence of four major deformational episodes. A late Proterozoic deformation (D1) produced isoclinal folds in high-grade migmatitic-gneissic basement and in the metasedimentary belt of Umm Badr. A phase of intense NNE—SSW ductile shearing (D2) in the Umm Badr belt refolded the earlier structures in the metasediments and is of late Pan-African age. Dextral ENE—WSW brittle shearing (D3) of latest Pan-African age also affected the metasedimentary belt of Umm Badr.A late Carboniferous to Triassic brittle shearing (D4) reactivation event in the Umm Badr and Jebel Nehud areas (dextral?) and in the Sodiri area (sinistral) extensively reactivates structures of the previous episodes of deformation, exploiting part of the anisotropic zones of weakness. Age limits for brittle shear deformation in the Umm Badr and Sodiri areas were established from KAr isotopic ages of igneous rocks with varying field relationships to the shearing.

Alkaline ring complexes in Sudan

An anorogenic petrographic province containing nearly 100 alkaline ring complexes extends across Sudan. These anorogenic complexes are distinct from late-orogenic granite-gabbro, calcalkaline plutonic centres particularly in the eastern part of Sudan, many of which also take the form of ring complexes. The biggest, most closely spaces, and most numerous ring complexes occur in a discontinuous belt of alkali granites and syenites, rarer foid syenites, and associated extrusive trachytes, rhyolites and ignimbrites exposed intermittently across 100 km from the Bayuda Desert and Nile River Valley near Khartoum to northern Kordofan Province and the Nuba Mountains region of central Sudan. These complexes range in age from Ordovician to Jurassic, but show no progressive change in age or distribution pattern other than a tendency to align locally in NW-trending bands, which might reflect zones of weakness in the underlying basement rocks. Mesozoic syenites and alkali granites forming plugs and ring complexes lie in a belt parallel to the coast in the Red Sea Hills of eastern Sudan. In the north-west of the country, alkali granites and foid syenites of Tertiary age crop out in the basement inlier of J. Uweinat, and Mesozoic granites, syenites and foid syenites form igneous plutons in Equatoria Province in the extreme south.

The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan.

The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan.

A Short Reconnaissance of Northern Darfur (Anglo-Egyptian Sudan) with Regard to Schistocerca gregaria, Forsk.

A short tour of northern Darfur was made by the author, on behalf of the Imperial Institute of Entomology, with the object of observing the solitary Schistocerca population, comparing it with that of northern Kordofan, and looking for any factors which might indicate the presence of potential outbreak centres of the desert locust.

Prehistoric Art in the Libyan Desert

SHOULD preliminary announcements be confirmed by subsequent examination of the evidence, a further link in the relations between the prehistoric art of northern Africa and the Bushman art of South Africa is afforded by discoveries made by Dr. Leo Frobenius in the Libyan Desert. Dr. Frobenius, who has just returned from his eleventh expedition to Africa, reports, according to a Frankfort dispatch in the Times of December 28, that he has discovered in the Auwenat massif a centre of supplies for the stone implement factories of various parts of North Africa, with evidence in the form of rock-drawings, stone tools and traces of pottery of two distinct cultural periods, the older coming from Lower Egypt in the north, the later, of a character hitherto unknown, coming from the south. Moving south to the oasis of Selimah in northern Kordofan, Dr. Frobenius discovered a new southern culture with a ceramic industry dating from between 6000 and 4000 B.C. in an area which he regards as having been the valley of a third or ‘Yellow’ Nile. On the route to this centre, 44 stone implement factories were discovered as well as several hundred rock-drawings, representing men and animals engaged in various activities. It is maintained that these discoveries throw a new light on the relations of the art of North Africa, East Spain and South Africa, while the dating of the ‘factories’ makes it possible to determine the direction of culture drift.

On Experiments in the Use of Poison Dusts against Adult Locusta migratorioides, Rch. & Frm., in the Sudan

The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan has, so far as may be ascertained, always been liable to plagues of the migratory locust, Schistocerca gregaria, Forsk., generally referred to as the desert locust. In the summer of 1930 in addition to this species swarms of another migratory locust, Locusta migratorioides, Rch. & Frm., locally known as the hairy-chested locust, appeared. In most districts natives stated that they had never before seen this second species, but elderly inhabitants of Darfur and northern Kordofan recognised it as having occurred some forty-two years previously for two successive seasons; the first year in large numbers, the second in but small numbers. It was hoped that history would repeat itself and that the hairy-chested locust would be relatively scarce in its second year, but unfortunately this hope has not been realised; L. migratorioides was a more serious plague in 1931 than in the preceding year.

Riebeckite-rhyolite from northern Kordofan, Sudan

While investigating the relies of early habitations at Beraeis, near Jebel Katul, 100 miles N.W. of El Obeid, northern Kordofan, Dr. C. G. Seligman found a number of implements all made of a finegrained, blue-grey stone, quantities of which he found at the base of Jebel Katul. A fragment of this stone was examined by Dr. G. T. Prior in 1912, and found to be rich in riebeckite.

Volcanic Rocks in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan

IN connection with Prof. J. W. Gregory's reference in NATURE of February 19, p. 667, to the discovery of the Bayuda volcanic field, and Mr. Campbell Smith's record of a riebeckite-rhyolite which constituted a number of stone implements found at Jebel Katul, in Northern Kordofan (ibid., February 26, p. 693), some further notes may be of interest.

Volcanic Rocks in Northern Kordofan, Sudan

IN view of the discovery of the Bayuda volcanic field observed by Dr. Chalmers Mitchell during the Times African flight, and referred to by Prof. J. W. Gregory in NATURE of February 19, some interest attaches to a specimen of a volcanic rock sent to the Mineral Department of the British Museum for identification in July, 1912, by Dr. C. G. Seligmann. The specimen was collected by Dr. Seligmann at the base of Jebel Katul, Northern Kordofan, where he found many stone implements made of the same rock.

The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan

The Tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan