Towards a proposed policy of groundwater management in Nubian Sandstone aquifer in Bir El-Shab area, South Western Desert, Egypt (original) (raw)
The Darb El-Arbaein project in southern Egypt aims to relieve population congestion by reclaiming 12000 acres of desert area. The project is planning to pump water from the Nubian Sandstone aquifer system to new communities in the desert through three phases. The first and the second operating phases were carried out in south Baris and Gebel Abu Bayan areas since 1999 while the third phase, till now under preparation, was planned to cultivate 3000 acres via drilling of 30 wells in Bir El-Shab area near the border with Sudan. In this paper, mathematical modeling technique is used to predict the future changes in the groundwater level decline in the third phase under different water policies to avoid the difficulties appeared during the two operating phases. The groundwater in the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer in Bir El-Shab area (NSABS) is available from Kiseiba and the underlying Taref sandstone confined aquifers. Daily periodic records of the groundwater depth were measured during the period 25/3-5/8/2006. The methodological approach was based on the mathematical modeling techniques applying 3D finite element groundwater simulation software (FEFLOW model). The total surface area of the model domain reached 900 km 2 . The two aquifer zones were discretized into 3 layers and 4 slices. The 6noded triangular prism mesh representing the model domain was divided into 12788 nodes with 17898 elements. Three testing scenarios were proposed. The first scenario aimed at applying the initial proposed water policy of pumping rate of 2200 m 3 /day/well and the second aimed at increasing the pumping time from 10 to 12 and 15 hours per day (2640 and 3300 m 3 /day/well respectively). The third scenario tested the increase in pumping rate by 30% based on the expected NSABS recharge from the new Tushki-lakes formed in the NE direction of the study area since 1998. The results of the daily periodic records of the depth to groundwater in the two observation wells showed a slight change in the groundwater level ranged from 0.12 to 0.3m while the recorded increase in the groundwater level in some wells during the interval 2001-07 (from 0.5 to 5m) showed the presence of new recharge source to the NSABS (new Tushki-lakes).
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