Geo-Environmental Changes and Their Impact on the Development of the Limestone Plateau, West of Assiut, Egypt

Abstract

One of the important projects that the Egypt country seeks to implement is the desert areas development, which contributes significantly to agricultural and urban development. Development of desert areas, especially agricultural development, should be carried out scientifically in terms of the use of available water resources, irrigation methods according to the type of soil and taking the geo-environmental risks into consideration. The objective of this research is to assess the geoenvironmental impact in the region under consideration and their effect on their natural components during their development phases. Estimating the rate of land-use/land-cover changes in the area is extremely important for the management of natural resources. Remote sensing and GIS techniques have been used to process the geological, topographical, landuse/land-cover and also locating high-risk areas that could be affected by flash flooding. This study showed that the study area comprises three land-cover classes: urban, agricultural and barren land. The expansion in the agricultural and residential areas was estimated from the Landsat satellite images from 1984 to 2018. The results had deduced the reasons for increasing the agricultural area and the validity of the western plateau lands for agricultural reclamation as well as land investment for residential projects such as Nasser city. The results indicate that the vegetated land increased by 9.68% and urban land by 3.17% after reclamation efforts were initiated.Keywords Geo-environment Á Geology Á Land use/land cover Á GIS and remote sensing Á Change detection Á Development

Geomatics-Based Modeling and Hydrochemical Analysis for Groundwater Quality Mapping in the Egyptian Western Desert: A Case Study of El-Dakhla Oasis

“…In some cases, groundwater is contaminated by heavy minerals as a consequence of human activities such as mineral extraction and manufacturing, decreasing water quality [13][14][15][16]. Human activities and geological formations are among the factors affecting groundwater quality [17][18][19][20]. Groundwater contamination is caused by rapid development, population increase, urbanization, expanding industrial sectors, heavy fertilizer use in irrigation fields, inadequate sewage systems, urban structures, and human and animal wastes.…”