288
E. Iwasaki et al.
fresh water supply. Ensuring sustainable water resource management is a matter of
high priority to the Government of Egypt, for the sake of food security.
For the concern of water scarcity in the Egyptian society, which is depending
mainly upon the Nile River, Egypt has been conducting land reclamation projects
since the 1960s, the most renown of which, and dealt in many chapters of this
book, is the New Valley Project launched in the early 1960s. The name of New
Valley Governorate lying in the Western Desert owes its name to this large-scale
governmental project.
Since then, many land reclamation projects were carried out in the Western Desert
including Dakhla Oasis. Recently, the Egyptian Government launched a mega project
that aims at reclaiming 1.5 million feddan (1 feddan = 1.03784 acre, 1 feddan =
4200 sq.m, and 1 acre = 4046.86 sq.m) in Sinai and the Western Desert including
Dakhla Oasis to harvest wheat which is the most important staple food in Egypt.
Thus, the New Valley Governorate, in the Western Desert, has been and further
becoming strategically an important region in Egypt for food security. However,
despite the growing interest for the agricultural development and the strategical
importance, much is known about the current environmental situations in the region
concerned.
Research from various disciplinary approaches is required to study how can the
region maintain the sustainability. All chapters in this book share the awareness
that the sustainability is the key issue of not only the Western Desert, but also for
the entire Egyptian society for securing the staple food. Such awareness led the
editors to gather researches on sustainability in the Western Desert, taking Dakhla
Oasis which is the most populated oasis in the Western Desert as a case study.
Although all the oases in the Western Desert share a common feature that they depend
upon the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer, each oasis has its own personality, geological
and hydrogeological conditions. This is the reason why the scope of the book is
mainly Dakhla Oasis. In the near future, we hope to extend our multi-disciplinary
research to other oases in the Western Desert to fully understand the problems and
potentiality of the sustainable development based on groundwater in Egypt.
2 An Update
The studies presented in this book have different views on the future of Dakhla
Oasis. Because of rainfall scarcity, Dakhla Oasis depends on groundwater for human
survival. As will be presented in the next paragraphs, in the conclusions section,
groundwater, human settlements, land use, archaeological sites, natural heritages,
all are subject to man-made hazards. There is an urgent need to assess the state of
land reclamation, its environmental impact, and groundwater potentiality in Dakhla
Oasis.
As will be presented in the last section, many authors are aware of water sustainability. Further researches based on multidisciplinary approaches are required to
E. Iwasaki et al.
fresh water supply. Ensuring sustainable water resource management is a matter of
high priority to the Government of Egypt, for the sake of food security.
For the concern of water scarcity in the Egyptian society, which is depending
mainly upon the Nile River, Egypt has been conducting land reclamation projects
since the 1960s, the most renown of which, and dealt in many chapters of this
book, is the New Valley Project launched in the early 1960s. The name of New
Valley Governorate lying in the Western Desert owes its name to this large-scale
governmental project.
Since then, many land reclamation projects were carried out in the Western Desert
including Dakhla Oasis. Recently, the Egyptian Government launched a mega project
that aims at reclaiming 1.5 million feddan (1 feddan = 1.03784 acre, 1 feddan =
4200 sq.m, and 1 acre = 4046.86 sq.m) in Sinai and the Western Desert including
Dakhla Oasis to harvest wheat which is the most important staple food in Egypt.
Thus, the New Valley Governorate, in the Western Desert, has been and further
becoming strategically an important region in Egypt for food security. However,
despite the growing interest for the agricultural development and the strategical
importance, much is known about the current environmental situations in the region
concerned.
Research from various disciplinary approaches is required to study how can the
region maintain the sustainability. All chapters in this book share the awareness
that the sustainability is the key issue of not only the Western Desert, but also for
the entire Egyptian society for securing the staple food. Such awareness led the
editors to gather researches on sustainability in the Western Desert, taking Dakhla
Oasis which is the most populated oasis in the Western Desert as a case study.
Although all the oases in the Western Desert share a common feature that they depend
upon the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer, each oasis has its own personality, geological
and hydrogeological conditions. This is the reason why the scope of the book is
mainly Dakhla Oasis. In the near future, we hope to extend our multi-disciplinary
research to other oases in the Western Desert to fully understand the problems and
potentiality of the sustainable development based on groundwater in Egypt.
2 An Update
The studies presented in this book have different views on the future of Dakhla
Oasis. Because of rainfall scarcity, Dakhla Oasis depends on groundwater for human
survival. As will be presented in the next paragraphs, in the conclusions section,
groundwater, human settlements, land use, archaeological sites, natural heritages,
all are subject to man-made hazards. There is an urgent need to assess the state of
land reclamation, its environmental impact, and groundwater potentiality in Dakhla
Oasis.
As will be presented in the last section, many authors are aware of water sustainability. Further researches based on multidisciplinary approaches are required to