Integrated solutions for hydrologic investigations in arid lands

Abstract

Hydrological assessment studies across vast regions of the arid world are often hindered by the inaccessibility of these areas and the paucity of data sets, as well as the high expenses and diffi culties entailed in acquiring these data sets, their unpublished nature, and their varying scales, projections, and datum. Using the Eastern Desert (ED) of Egypt (225,000 km 2) and the Sinai Peninsula (61,000 km 2) as test sites, we demonstrate practical and cost-effective integrated (geochemistry, geophysics, and modeling) solutions that utilize web-based geographic information system (GIS) (http://www.esrs .wmich.edu/webmap) technologies and take advantage of readily available global remote sensing data sets. Adopted methodologies allowed: (1) development of conceptual models for hydrogeologic settings conducive to groundwater entrapment and augmentation, including groundwater in fractured basement aquifers, groundwater impounded by dike swarms crosscutting alluvial aquifers, and groundwater residing in alluvial aquifers associated with ascending deep-seated fossil waters; (2) selection of criteria to identify and validate the preferred distribution of each of these aquifer types and usage of the selected criteria and observations from the GIS data sets to identify, test, and refi ne potential well locations; and (3) construction and calibration of hydrologic models to estimate average annual recharge over the major watersheds in the Sinai (463 × 10 6 m 3 /yr) and ED (171 × 10 6 m 3 /yr) and the average modern contributions to Nubian fossil aquifers (Sinai: 13 × 10 6 m 3 /yr), and to model the partitioning of precipitation as a function of precipitation amounts. The successful application of the integrated and cost-effective methodologies developed for the study areas should invite similar applications in arid regions elsewhere.

Transient Evolution of Inland Freshwater Lenses: Comparison of Numerical and Physical Experiments

“…As the demand for water resources in arid environments intensifies in conjunction with climate change, novel approaches for water resources development are needed [51][52][53][54][55]. Desert communities have historically used inland and coastal freshwater lenses combined with ancient irrigation techniques (e.g., runoff harvesting, subsurface canals) for access to freshwater because the methods were uncomplicated and technologically inexpensive [56][57][58].…”

Integrated Strategies for the Management of Wadi Flash Floods in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Arid Zones: The ISFF Project

“…This approach has also been utilized to calculate the annual groundwater recharge at the Nubian Sandstone aquifer, South Sinai (Sultan et al 2011). A proper example of cost-effective and practical integrated solutions, including geophysics, geochemistry, and modelling, that utilize global remote sensing datasets and web-based GIS technologies was proposed by Becker et al (2012) for the wadis of the Eastern Desert and Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. The study implemented approaches to develop a conceptual model for hydrogeological settings in different aquifers to assess the annual runoff and recharge using a hydrologic model of the main watersheds.…”

Multi-Scale Hydrologic Sensitivity to Climatic and Anthropogenic Changes in Northern Morocco

“…Souss was selected for more detailed study given the recent groundwater storage changes. Regionalization techniques where calibrated catchment-specific parameters were successfully transferred to similar ungauged proximal catchments can be found throughout the literature (e.g., [4,15,[78][79][80]). These techniques involve identification of a set of physical catchment descriptors (PCDs: e.g., geography, climate, topography, geology, catchment size) that could be used as indicators to whether catchment-specific parameters could be extrapolated to an ungauged basin (e.g., Gauged: Oum Er Rbia; Ungauged: Souss).…”