Egypt
- More Re Out Of Africa Via Wet Sahara
Science Now (Michael Balter) Modern humans arose in sub-Saharan Africa as early as 200,000 years ago, but our species did not venture beyond Africa until at least 80,000 years later. Just why they took so long to travel north is not clear, but many researchers...
- More Re Drying Of The Sahara
Scientific American In a finding that may help scientists better predict the pace of climate change, research published in Science shows how the Sahara Desert, a region as big as the U.S. that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea across northern...
- Environment: Western Desert Groundwater Could Last 300 Years
Egypt Daily Star News As the Arab Water Council meets today for the first Arab Region Consultative Workshop March 13-15 to prepare its research papers and regional reports for the Fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul in March 2009, many questions surround...
- Egypt Working To Reclaim The Desert
SFGate Not Egyptology, but it's a slow news day and the topic might be of interest to some visitors: Abu Minqar, 404 miles southwest of Cairo, had previously been a bleak moonscape before the government began drilling for water in 1987 in the vast...
- Travel: The Complete Guide To Nile Journeys
The Independent on Sunday (David Else)Picture a map of Africa, and divide it in four. The top right-hand bit – the north-eastern quadrant, for the geographically minded – is dominated by the Nile. It has two main tributaries: the White Nile, flowing...
Egypt
The Nubian Aquifer
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200701/seas.beneath.the.sands.htm
It might seem like a bit of stretch to include an article about the Nubian aquifer in an Egyptology blog, and to be honest it is a bit of a stretch, but today is a low news day, and this might be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about the underlying resources that have supplied the Western Desert oases from prehistoric times onwards:
"Look at a map of North Africa from Egypt to Algeria. Almost everything outside the Nile Valley and south of the coastal plain appears to be lifeless sand and gravel deserts, spotted here and there with oases and rain-catching massifs of uplifted bedrock. But peer deeper, under the sand, and you will find water.
Under the Sahara lie three major aquifers, strata of saturated sandstones and limestones that hold water in their pores like a wet sponge. The easternmost of these, extending over two million square kilometers, underlies all of Egypt west of the Nile, all of eastern Libya, and much of northern Chad and Sudan, and contains 375,000 cubic kilometers of water—the equivalent of 3750 years of Nile River flow. It is called the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, and lately it has come to the attention of practitioners of a subspecialty of nuclear science known as isotope hydrology."
It might seem like a bit of stretch to include an article about the Nubian aquifer in an Egyptology blog, and to be honest it is a bit of a stretch, but today is a low news day, and this might be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about the underlying resources that have supplied the Western Desert oases from prehistoric times onwards:
"Look at a map of North Africa from Egypt to Algeria. Almost everything outside the Nile Valley and south of the coastal plain appears to be lifeless sand and gravel deserts, spotted here and there with oases and rain-catching massifs of uplifted bedrock. But peer deeper, under the sand, and you will find water.
Under the Sahara lie three major aquifers, strata of saturated sandstones and limestones that hold water in their pores like a wet sponge. The easternmost of these, extending over two million square kilometers, underlies all of Egypt west of the Nile, all of eastern Libya, and much of northern Chad and Sudan, and contains 375,000 cubic kilometers of water—the equivalent of 3750 years of Nile River flow. It is called the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, and lately it has come to the attention of practitioners of a subspecialty of nuclear science known as isotope hydrology."
Don't miss the slideshow in the blue "View Photos" box (main picture, top of the page). See the above page for the full story.
- More Re Out Of Africa Via Wet Sahara
Science Now (Michael Balter) Modern humans arose in sub-Saharan Africa as early as 200,000 years ago, but our species did not venture beyond Africa until at least 80,000 years later. Just why they took so long to travel north is not clear, but many researchers...
- More Re Drying Of The Sahara
Scientific American In a finding that may help scientists better predict the pace of climate change, research published in Science shows how the Sahara Desert, a region as big as the U.S. that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea across northern...
- Environment: Western Desert Groundwater Could Last 300 Years
Egypt Daily Star News As the Arab Water Council meets today for the first Arab Region Consultative Workshop March 13-15 to prepare its research papers and regional reports for the Fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul in March 2009, many questions surround...
- Egypt Working To Reclaim The Desert
SFGate Not Egyptology, but it's a slow news day and the topic might be of interest to some visitors: Abu Minqar, 404 miles southwest of Cairo, had previously been a bleak moonscape before the government began drilling for water in 1987 in the vast...
- Travel: The Complete Guide To Nile Journeys
The Independent on Sunday (David Else)Picture a map of Africa, and divide it in four. The top right-hand bit – the north-eastern quadrant, for the geographically minded – is dominated by the Nile. It has two main tributaries: the White Nile, flowing...