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Land Utilization in the Farafra Oasis

1994; De Gruyter Open; Volume: 6; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2478/mgrsd-1994-060132

2084-6118

Maksymilian Skotnicki,

Transboundary Water Resource Management

FARAFRA OASISGrounds which could be regarded as traditionally cultivable land slope from the built up area westwards in the direction of the fields under reclamation by the governmental agencies.The new works undertaken with the use of considerable amount of means and labour are at different stages of realization, which is apparent from deep tracts of drain pipes set in the north-south direction and geometrically shaped fields stretching outside of them, lying amidst vast expanses of land still unreclaimed.The reclaimed lands range from parcels showing miserable grain cultures on saline soils and fields usually barren of trees but surprising by diversity of their cereals and vegetables, to larger areas in which cereal and fodder crops predominate.The principal productive area is a fruit-tree grove semi-circling the settlement on the western side.This intensively cultivated area of about 80 hectares is irrigated by a simple gravitation method by two sources of water (Fig. l).The old one, Ain al-Balad (Source of the Town), whose history probably goes as far back as the Roman times, yields ca 500 cubic metres daily and feeds medium-sized parcels where water flows in earthen canals not longer than 250 m.Water distribution does not show a consistent system of organization.It just seeps through crumbling embankments and fills shallow internal pools where usually grow several dozen years old olive trees and date palms (Fig. 2).They do not seem to be carefully tended and are visited only at the time of gathering the crops.On the whole, the system looks markedly neglected.The new well -a typical bir -drilled in the 1960s with a capacity of ca 7,000 cubic metres per day is a basic spring.Its water is distributed in the northern and southern, but particularly in the western direction by the canals in their initial parts built of concrete, and farther on just made of earth.From the main ones there branch the secondary canals feeding with water canals on the lower level or directly watering the fields.Within the boundaries of the traditionally cultivable land the network of canals of primary and secondary level exceeds 27 kilometres in length and extends far beyond these old fields into the newly reclaimed lands.Temperature at the mouth of the new well equals 37°C; 300 m farther it drops to 31°C and at the outlets to the most distant fields to about