Evaluation of the groundwater resources potential of Siwa Oasis using three-dimensional multilayer groundwater flow model, Mersa Matruh Governorate, Egypt
摘要
Siwa represents the last virgin oasis in the western desert of Egypt. Recently, serious environmental changes pertaining to the invaluable groundwater resources, such soil salinity and expansion in surface lakes have developed due to excessive uncontrolled groundwater discharge associating land development for agriculture. The present work tackles these problems through monitoring the configuration of pressure head in carbonate and Nubian Sandstone aquifers using multilayer groundwater model. Several scenarios for pumping stress are tested, and the results indicated that the optimum pumping should be close to 520,000?m3/day with important disturbances in the pressure head encountered between Bahei El-Din Lake and Zeitoun Lake. This aquifer stress is capable of lowering the pressure head to stop artesian flow and inconsequence saves large water quantities draining daily to the lakes through natural flow and mitigates the waterlogging problems. In addition, minimal changes are observed in the eastern part of the modeled area suggesting additional production wells to tap the aquifer system at this barren area and initiate new development projects. Such results demonstrate the potential of groundwater flow modeling in water resources management to define the optimum pumping scenarios capable to mitigate environmental problems.