الفهرس 
Groundwater Flow in Karst Systems
THE EGYPTIAN KARSTIC AREASOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
With the continuously growing population, Egypt needs to plan for the
migration of people to newly developed lands. The country Limited and
unexpandable surface water supply are hindering such a task. This indisputable
fact forced planners and decision-makers to look at groundwater as Egypt’s
future promising resource for development. The karstic carbonate formation,
though covering about 50% of the country, its potential for development
remained unevaluated. The regional study conducted by the Research Institute
for Ground Water in Egypt, identified a number of areas as promising areas for
development. Nevertheless, quantitative evaluation of the formation, hydraulic
parameters or potentiality, remained unattempted. Out of the identified areas,
El-Gindi Basin was selected for quantitative investigations because it is one of
the most promising areas of karstic carbonate aquifer system. This site was
used as pilot area for applying some of the field investigation to determine the
hydraulic parameters of the aquifer system and to draw the isopiezometric head
.. map
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The absence of quantitative studies is attributed to the inapplicability of
traditional porous media methodologies for hydraulic parameters estimation or
numerical modeling on the fractured media. It is also attributed to the high
heterogeneity of the fractured formation that requires intensive field
investigations to properly quantify the hydraulic parameters. Methods for
quantifying the hydraulic parameters of the fractured system have been
established. Also different numerical modeling methods and concepts were
developed that can achieve an acceptable accuracy when applied at the
appropriate conditions.
In the present thesis some of these methods are described. First attempts of
applying some of these methods in Egypt were made. Few pumping tests were
performed at El-Gindi Basin and Siwa oasis to quantify the hydraulic
parameters of the karstic carbonate formation at these locations to assess the
potentiality quantitatively. It was found that the transmissivity of fractures is
equal to 59.33 m2/day at El-Gindi Basin and ranges from 40.299 to 1976.7
m2/day at SiwA finite element model based on the double porosity method was used to
study the groundwater potential of EI-Gindi Basin area. In spite that the •
results obtained from the pumping tests are reasonably reliable, the used
model can only be regarded, due to the severe lack of data, as a tool to help
in highlighting the information gaps that, and their priorities, need to be
filled in order to evaluate the carbonate formations potential. Also it had
been used to study the possibility of making any development depending on
agriculture.
Groundwater samples from different aquifers in EI-Gindi basin were
collected and analyzed to investigate the suitability for various uses. The
chemical analyses indicate that the groundwater in the karstic carbonate
aquifer system is slightly brackish but it is suitable for supporting an
aquaculture project and a certain type of agricultural development such as
olives and Palms. Moreover, Several tests for isotope use in hydrology
have been made to identify the source of recharge of groundwater in
karstic aquifer and its age. The Environmental tracers indicated that the
main source of recharge is from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System.
The results also indicated that the groundwater in the karstic carbonate ..
aquifer age in the study area is about 13,000 years