Hydrology: Current Research

Many studies and researches have been published discussed water resources in the Nile Delta in Egypt and have dealt with them in different ways, these studies have always been local, and do not cover the entire Nile Delta. Furthermore, most adaptation and mitigation policies and strategies focus only on small and limited areas and do not take into account the common effects that may be seen when examining the Nile Delta from a regional perspective, such as depletion of groundwater levels, pollution, sea level rise, climate change impacts, and expected changes in the future after the completion of the Ethiopian dams. This study aims to develop a future vision for the groundwater system management in the Nile Delta in Egypt, which will take into account the existing issues and challenges, including the depletion of groundwater aquifers, quality deterioration, pollution, and sea water intrusion, moreover the arising future challenges from the completion of the Ethiopian dams and its potential impacts on the Egyptian water resources system, especially, groundwater aquifer in the delta of Nile. Also, this study prompts for reviewing, analyzing the problem and identifying future adaptation strategies that can mitigate the negative impacts of the Ethiopian dams on groundwater water system, and development a capacity for coping with any future effects and impacts. The most important conclusions of this study are; (i) the water policy in Egypt should be modified to overcome the major expected challenges of building the Ethiopian dams, (ii) the agricultural areas at the end of the irrigation canals are expected to be one of the first affected areas by the lack of surface water in the Nile Delta due to the construction of the Ethiopian dams., (iii) the use of groundwater in the Nile Delta is strongly linked to availability of Nile water and any shortage as a result of the Ethiopian dams will be covered by drilling more of groundwater wells, whether legally or illegally, (iv) the basic pillars of the future vision for groundwater management in the Nile Delta are directly related to solve the end user issues such as; fragmentation of ownership agriculture lands, applying new technologies, groundwater wells registration, and groundwater aquifer protection.

Analysis of long-term data of groundwater levels is required to provide an insight into the reaction of groundwater resources to climate variability, land use changes, human activities and consumption. In recent decades the increasing use of groundwater and natural extremes had resulted in lowering of its level in large parts of the world. In addition, it has been increasingly threatened in quantity and quality. For maintaining sustainability of groundwater resources, it is important to understand aquifer storage change in long-term. Many studies had showed under different conditions how groundwater levels change with time. This review presents long-term variations of aquifer quantity worldwide. It shows three aspects: main factors that impact groundwater level variations, applied methods to evaluate these variations and the situation of groundwater.

Automatic evaporimeter was developed using a set of sensors and transducer such as carbon resistor, semi-carbon conductor and lighting diode-4 v 60 mm amp to start the mechanism of automated measurement. The working principle of the instrument was developed using 10 values of initial and final lighting points (ILP, FLP) and the rate of evaporation from the Class A Pan was obtained in physical variables (Voltage and refractive values). The instrument was calibrated using different statistics metrics. The instrument’s time response to a step change in water level from the evaporation was calibrated to every level (0.1 cm) of water change in the pan. Automated evaporimeter has the capacity to measure daily maximum evaporation value of 0.3 cm and this corresponds to the refractive value (√e) of 15.0 and voltage (v) of 225.6 v respectively.