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Toward a great water resource for agriculture and a soft weather for tourism in inland western desert of Egypt
 Ashraf M. S. Mahrous Assistant Lecturer, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineer AL - Minia University, Egypt Email: mahrous71@yahoo.com Prof. Mojmir Kyselka Faculty of Architecture, VUT Brno, Czech republic Assoc. Prof. Peter Spicka (Ph.D.) Arch. Dept. faculty of civil Slovak technical University. Abstract
This paper presents a GIS powerful tool for seawater management project in inland of western desert of Egypt. The main objective of this paper is to soft the estimated hard weather to be fit for tourism industry and compensate the depreciated water from the underground storehouse. To achieve its objectives the paper proposed to desalting and transforming the seawater from Mediterranean Sea to the five cities and creates new lakes. This water will be absorbed through the sand layers to supply the underground storehouse, also it will be evaporated to soft the hared weather. The planning task of this project is "site selection". This paper seeks for answer one query: How to define the optimal site of the proposed lakes and the optimal path of the channel the water will flow in. To find a decision-maker helpful answer for this query, we have used ArcView GIS and ArcView spatial analyst software to modeling process of the problem solution. Then the paper presents a suitability map of the optimal sites for the new lakes and channel. At the end we have finished this paper on some Conclusions and recommendations. Introduction Last 30 years of the elapsed century testified a hard weather, high temperature, and rare rain over whole the global that caused melting the ice in the Antarctica continent and oceans. This cause increasing of the sea level 1mm annually and extension of the sea boundaries. But melting of all ice in Antarctica and oceans need 20 C° more than the current temperature, if that were fact the sea water level will be 60-70 meters higher than the current level. (Josef Matyas, 2001). Western desert of Egypt is one of many areas must be beneficiary from this situation. It contains five oasis Kharga, Dakhla, Farafa, AL-Baharia, and Siwa. It also contains under sea-level depression: El-Qattara depression situated in east of Siwa oasis and Sitra, Nuweinmisa, Bahren, and Areg depression south of Siwa oasis. Kharga City, Mute City, Farafra City, Bawity City, and Siwa City are the main cites in the five oases respectively. Most of people -in this cities- work in agriculture and tourism field. Agriculture is depended on the underground water for irrigation and drinking. There are three different theories concerns on this quantity of underground water, the first: concludes that the underground water is not renewed but the water collected at the old rainy ages and stored underground. (Abdo Shata, Mohamed Draz, and Asmaa Shata, 1996) The second: concludes that the water is renewed and comes from the rainfall on Tpsty, Aerdy, and Inedy mountains in Chad and west of Sudan. This water flows through the sandstone and the sand layers in the EWD, however decrease of the water level in wells is interpreted by the quantity of obtained water more than the flowed water. (Ibrahem H. Hameda, 1964) The third: integrates the previous two theories and considered this water is renewed and non-renewed. (Sabry M. Hamad, 1996). Generally, the water is decreased in the wells where it was flow from springs but now it must be dragged by machines. Properly, the underground water maybe extinct, thus the agriculture is menaced too. The tourism is depended on many types of tourist potential facilities such as monuments, very famous hot and cold water wells and springs, therapeutic tourism and safari, and adventure-good deserts. Tourists there prefer the dry weather of desert however it will not be suitable weather for tourism in next 50 years. Therefore we try to find a dream-solution to soft this expected hard weather and preserving the underground water's level in inland western desert of Egypt. We suggest desalting and transforming the seawater from Mediterranean Sea to the five cities and create new lakes. Some of this transformed water will be absorbed through the sand layers; this water will be a great solution to compensate the depreciated water from the underground storehouse. The another some of water will be evaporated by the high temperature; this will increate the air humidity and soft the weather. Problem definition The problem is how to define the optimal sites for the new lakes beside the Egyptian western desert cities (EWDC), define the optimal path of water channel from Mediterranean Sea to these lakes, and define the position of desalting station and pumping stations. This type of problems named "site selection problem" Traditional technology is unsuccessful to solve this problem. High advanced technology must be used to infest the desert. GIS technology is the best way to perform this task easily. The selection will be based on the optimal sites, which is located in smooth and plane topography. Methodology
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