GIS-based groundwater management model for Western Nile Delta

The limited availability of renewable fresh water is a major constraint on future agriculture and urban development in Egypt. The main water resource that Egypt has been depending on is the River Nile. Nowadays, the role of groundwater is steadily increasing and will cover 20% of the total water supply in the coming decades especially in the reclaimed areas along the desert fringes of the Nile Delta and Valley. Abstraction from groundwater in Egypt is dynamic in nature as it grows rapidly with the expansion of irrigation activities, industrialization, and urbanization. One of these areas is the Western Nile Delta in which the groundwater is exploited in many localities. To avoid the deterioration of the aquifer system in this area, an efficient integrated and sustainable management plan for groundwater resources is needed. Efficient integrated and sustainable management of water resources relies on a comprehensive database that represents the characteristics of the aquifer system and modeling tools to achieve the impacts of decision alternatives. In this paper, a GIS-based model has been developed for the aquifer system of the Western Nile Delta. The GIS provides the utilization of analytical tools and visualization capabilities for pre- and post-processing information involved in groundwater modeling for the study area. The developed model was calibrated for steady state and transient conditions against the historical groundwater heads observed during the last 20 yr. The calibrated model was used to evaluate groundwater potentiality and to test two alternative management scenarios for conserving the aquifer system in Western Nile Delta. In the first scenario, reducing the surface water inflow while increasing the annual abstraction from groundwater by about 450 million m² and improving the irrigation system could increase the net aquifer recharge by about 5.7% and reduce the aquifer potentiality by about 91%. Constructing a new canal as a second management scenario could increase the annual aquifer potentiality by about 23%. The GIS-based model has been proven to be an efficient tool for formulating integrated and sustainable management plan.