Abstract
Water scarcity is one of the major concerns that people are facing worldwide. Although the liquid is absolutely abundant through the globe, its availability poses too much problems specifically to each region. Those problems can result in one or a combination of three basic situations: declining water (drought), overabundance of surface water (floods) or degradation of the quality of water (pollution). All these situations are reflected in the scarcity of good quality water. Arid regions are particularly concerned. In such areas where groundwater contained in aquifers is usually perceived as providence, any project of groundwater exploration and exploitation must be preceded by prior careful and meticulous investigation, in order to avoid early and premature drying. This investigation is likely to predict the future behaviour of aquifers and to improve the groundwater resources management. Beside fundamental properties as hydraulic conductivity, the present paper that addresses the water sector in the semi-arid region of northern Cameroon emphasizes the importance of porosity on aquifer productivity and consequently on the groundwater resources management. The porosity of the local aquifer has then been determined using the Waxman and Smits model which establishes a reliable relationship between the apparent and corrected formation factors, F a and F c , taking the clay effects into consideration. This approach can be applied in other similar semi-arid regions through the world.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are very thankful to the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. James W. LaMoreaux, and to both anonymous reviewers who helped us to significantly improve the quality of this paper. The first author would like to thank Prof. Ibrahim Othman, General Director of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission for allowing Prof. Jamal Asfahani to join the research team that conducted this investigation.
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Arétouyap, Z., Philippe, N.N., Nouayou, R. et al. Aquifer porosity in the Pan-African semi-arid context. Environ Earth Sci 76, 134 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-017-6440-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-017-6440-0