Assessment and Development of
Alternative Water Resources in the Sinai Peninsula,
Egypt
Demand for freshwater supplies in arid and semi-arid
countries worldwide is on the rise because of
increasing populations and limited water supplies.
This problem is exemplified in countries of Saharan
Africa (North Africa) and the Middle East, where scarcity of
water resources is contributing to political instability, disputes,
conflicts, and terrorism. This project
will be investigating ways to integrate renewable groundwater resources into
the water budget
of watersheds in arid regions,
as well as demonstrating the viability of alternative water resources that could complement
or substitute for surface waters, thus easing usage conflicts and
allowing some water flow for the ecosystems.
The Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, the study area, has two major sources
of water: (1) the renewable flash flood water and (2) the
non-renewable groundwater of the Nubian Aquifer,
an extensive aquifer in Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
Sudan, and Chad, that is hosted in the Nubian
Sandstone. In Egypt, that aquifer covers large domains of the Eastern
Desert, the Western Desert, and Sinai. Currently, Egypt is
using almost its full allocation of the Nile River water (i.e., 55
billion m3/yr) (Gheith and Sultan, 2002). With the growing
population (~2 million/year), Egypt has to explore alternative
renewable water resources. In this exercise, we adopt methodologies
to identify renewable water resources other than the River Nile.
Although the Nubian Aquifer is a non-renewable resource, we provide
ways to identify previously undetected areas of natural discharge
that could be used in a sustainable manner.
This project entails utilizing our recent findings
from our UNDP/GEF-funded project entitled "Developing
Renewable Groundwater Resources in Arid Lands: A
Pilot Case – The Eastern
Desert of Egypt" where we developed an innovative
approach to locate renewable groundwater reservoirs,
defined criteria for targeting potential wells, and
identified about 200 well locations in the Eastern
Desert of Egypt. We will
test and refine the methodologies we developed for the
Eastern Desert to identify similar potential renewable
groundwater resources in the Sinai Peninsula.
Collaborator: Dr. Farouk Soliman,
Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt
Funded by: NATO (Environmental
Security Program)
