Abstract
The number of deep groundwater wells in the arid lands of Egypt has increased greatly since the mid-twentieth century. Modern well drilling technology using rotary drilling rigs and pumping tests came to Egypt with the beginning of the New Valley Project in 1958, bringing significantly increased water discharge. Taking Rashda Village in Dakhla Oasis as a case study, this paper documents the expansion of agricultural lands as a result of the development and application of well drilling technologies. The materials used include satellite images from 1968 until 2018, and groundwater well data obtained from field visits and governmental reports. The analysis makes clear that there has been a huge change in land use/cover over the past 50 years (1968–2018) with the largest expansion of agricultural lands occurring between 1988 and 2003 driven by acceleration in well drilling. One of the complex phenomena that appeared is the increase in drainage ponds from 15.6 ha in 1968 to 194.4 ha in 2018 where growth of drainage ponds was correlated with the rapid increase in agricultural lands (1998–2003). In the past two decades, Rashda village has been under continuous pressure from population growth and increasing water demand for agricultural, domestic, industrial, and institutional uses. However, the development has continued without attention to its sustainability.
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Source: ALOS PALSAR Satellite data (2008)
Source: Well data collected by field work in 2007
Source: See Table 1
Source: See Table 1
Source: 2007 and 2016 well data from fieldwork, 2014 well data from the irrigation office, land use from satellite images (see Sect. “Material and methods”)
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Notes
In fact, the General Authority of Desert Development managed the land reclamation projects, including the drilling of government wells. This authority later became the Ministry of Agrarian Reform and Land Reclamation in the 1960s, which then separated into two ministries: the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Land Reclamation.
General Authority of Desert Development became General Authority for Reclamation Projects and Agricultural Development (GARPAD) in 1995.
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Funding
This work was funded by the MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number, Project JP17H16026).
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Communicated by Prof. Mohamed Ksibi, co-Editor-in-Chief and Dr. Mohamed Kefi, Guest Editor.
This paper was selected from the Tunisia-Japan Symposium on Science, Society and Technology (TJASSST 2019), Sousse, Tunisia.
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Iwasaki, E., Elbeih, S., Shalaby, A. et al. Wells and land use changes in Dakhla Oasis (Egypt) using geospatial analysis: case study of Rashda village. Euro-Mediterr J Environ Integr 5, 61 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41207-020-00202-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41207-020-00202-x