Spectroscopic and Chromatographic Characterization of the Composition of Organic Matter in Arid Salt-Affected Soils Under Different Vegetation Cover, Southeastern Tunisia (Gabes and Medenine)

Agriculture sustainability in arid lands of southern Tunisia: Ecological impacts of irrigation water quality and human practices*

“…The monitoring of groundwater quality is of paramount importance to elucidate the effects of groundwater quality on the local environment and on the sustainability of natural resources (Kamel 2013; Hamed et al, 2014; Bouajila et al, 2016; Besser et al, 2017; Hadj‐Amor et al, 2020; Omar et al, 2019). In fact, the groundwater resources exploited from deep aquifers reveal perpetual changes in quality and in major and minor element contents related to the particularities of these multilayered aquifers.…”

“…The sustainability of the oasis culture in the Kebili region, the unique economic activity of the region and unique source of employment for the local population, is threatened by numerous factors varying from natural, namely climate variability (long dry periods, rare rainfall) and restricted agricultural lands (proximity of salt depressions and sandy dunes), and anthropogenic factors, such as overexploitation, poor drainage system, inappropriate agricultural practices, excessive use of fertilizer, uncontrolled expansion of oases and water pumping, etc. The cumulative ecological impacts of these factors lead to unrecoverable degradation of the area and difficult pollution of natural resources that are currently observed in different localities of the study area (Hamed, 2015; Omar et al, 2019). Thus, it seems to be of crucial importance to have new methodologies of integrated management of natural resources and systematic monitoring of the environmental sensitivity of the region to update decision‐making and to secure the sustainability of the oasis system.…”

An overview of groundwater resources evolution in North Africa: sustainability assessment of the CI aquifer under natural and anthropogenic constraints

“…The cumulative impacts of these neighboring boreholes induced large depression cones and modified the local flow directions . According to previous studies, the hydrodynamic behavior of the CI groundwater system, regarding the complex lithologic proprieties of the multi-layered system and the multi-directional tectonic features, has become difficult to predict as the preferential pathways can be modified in response to the continuous exploitation, leading to a series of environmental problems such as inversion drainage from the Chotts aquifer downward to the deep reservoirs as well as for the shallow new-formed aquifer beneath the oasis agro-systems (Omar et al 2019).…”