"Geophysical contribution to the groundwater exploration in the area of El Gallaba Plain, west of Kom Ombo, Egypt"

Abstract

Horizontal expansion in new lands in the Egyptian desert has long been a key strategic target pursued by successive governments. However, there are still many questions about the possibility of providing water for the reclamation of new land without resorting to the Nile water, at a time when Egypt suffers from severe shortage of surface water resources. One of the targeted promising new lands for reclamation is El Gallaba Plain (also known as El Kubbaniya basin) which is a desert area at the western fringes of the Nile Valley in Upper Egypt and lies to the Northwest of Aswan City and west of Kom Ombo town. It is a vast plain with an area of about 5500 km2 (≈550,000 Hectare). The hydrological setting and the groundwater potential of El Gallaba Plain is still not well understood. Such information deficiency necessitates more investigations to provide the needed subsurface geological and hydrogeological settings for safe groundwater exploitation. Therefore, the area of El Gallaba Plain has been selected for investigation in the present work. The investigated area is about 2574 km2 and lies between Latitudes 24.4o and 25.0o N and Longitudes 32.4o and 32.9o E with an average E-W width of about 39 km and N-S length of about 66 km. The present work depends on using the Transient Electromagnetic (TEM) technique for groundwater exploration over El Gallaba Plain. The exploration work has been carried out with the following main objectives: