Delta Wadi El-Arish, Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, forms one of the most important parts of Egypt for industrial and agricultural expansion projects. This study focuses on the hydrogeology and the hydrochemistry of the Quaternary aquifer in the delta Wadi El-Arish area. Accurate information about the groundwater characteristics of the Quaternary aquifer will allow implementation of a sound water management policy for the Wadi El-Arish area. The objectives of this study include: 1) determining the relationships between groundwater extraction and water levels and water quality using water-level measurements, total extraction of the wells, and chemical analyses of water samples; 2) determining the direction of groundwater flow using water-level measurements; 3) calculating the hydraulic parameters of the Quaternary aquifer using pumping test data; and 4) determining the hydrochemical characteristics of groundwater in the Quaternary aquifer. The results of this study indicate that: 1. Potentiometric surface elevations have decreased by an average of about 0.5 m. 2. Potentiometric surface elevations have decreased in response to an increase in extraction rates. 3. The transmissivity of the lower Pleistocene calcareous sandstone (kurkar) unit is higher than the transmissivity of the upper Pleistocene sand and gravel alluvial deposits. 4. Groundwater in the upper Pleistocene sand and gravel aquifer is augmented with groundwater leaking from the overlying Holocene sand deposits through the intervening sandy clay aquitard. 5. Total dissolved solids (TDS) concentrations have been increased by an average of about 1,500 ppm. 6. An increase in sea water intrusion in the northern part of the study area has occurred. 7. Groundwater in the calcareous sandstone kurkar is of lower quality than groundwater in the alluvium sand and gravel. Management of the groundwater resources should include the following recommendations: 1. No new pumping wells should be drilled in the area. 2. Accurate estimates for the total recharge should be determined using a more detailed water budget for the delta Wadi El-Arish area. 4. The operation of wells should be managed by an automatic control system.

No description available.

Although only a few of us have been to the desert, we all have a clear and chromatic image of it. Our mental representation of these landscapes has been formed throughout the years through photographic media and film. A few well known visual and literary works that contributed to the myth of the desert include: Le Petit Prince (1943), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926), T.E Lawrence Lawrence of Arabia (1962), David Lean Theeb (2014), Naji Abu Nowar This fascination led to an increase in demand for travel to these mythological places. Such an increase raises particular challenges for the desert and its inhabitants that include a demand for services and infrastructure and an appetite to learn more about the site. The phenomenon creates new issues that require creative solutions and interventions. How can architecture provide spaces as a solution to mitigate these issues? The thesis examines the question in the context of the Wadi Rum Protected Area (WRPA), a UNESCO world heritage site that is located in the Arabian Desert region. It proposes a cultural center that reflects the ecological and cultural significance of the site. The architecture of the building converges elements from the desert with elements from local bedouin culture. The building aims to create spaces for educational opportunities to the bedouin and the tourist in order to enhance the visitor's experiences and enrich the local's knowledge. / Master of Architecture / This thesis examines the issues that are associated with an increase in tourism in the Wadi Rum Protected Area (WRPA), a UNESCO World Heritage site that is located in the Arabian Desert Region. The thesis attempts to provide a solution through architecture and urban planning strategies that include the proposition of educational spaces for the tourist and the local. These architectural spaces have the ability to add value to the tourist's experience and enrich the local community in the future.

Depuis la découverte dans les années 1970 des premiers vestiges du IIème millénaire av. J.-C., cette période est considérée comme une phase d’effondrement des cultures préhistoriques de la péninsule omanaise. Appelés « période Wadi Suq » les trois premiers quarts du IIème millénaire av. J.-C. sont encore bien souvent perçus comme une période de Dark Ages faisant suite à la disparition de la culture Umm an-Nar du IIIème millénaire av. J.-C. Cette période se caractériserait par une diminution de la population, un abandon des sites et le retour à un mode de vie nomade. Pourtant les fouilles menées depuis une trentaine d’années, aussi bien dans les oasis du nord que le long du littoral au sud-est de la péninsule, ont livré les témoignages d’une culture plus complexe et sans doute moins hétéroclite qu’on ne l’envisage habituellement. Ces nouvelles données nous invitent à nuancer l’hypothèse d’un profond bouleversement entre les IIIème et IIème millénaires, de sorte qu’il est aujourd’hui nécessaire d’opérer une synthèse des connaissances sur la période afin de proposer de nouvelles approches des changements à la fois économiques, politiques et sociaux, survenus au cours du Bronze moyen et récent. / Since the discovery in the 1970s of the first remains of the second millennium BC, this period has been considered a collapse phase of the prehistoric cultures of the Oman peninsula. Called “Wadi Suq period” the first three quarts of the second millennium BC are still often seen as a period of Dark Ages following the disappearance of the Umm an-Nar culture of the 3rd millenium BC. This period has been characterized by a decline in the population, the sites abandonment and a return to a nomadic lifestyle. Yet, excavations conducte dover the last thirty years, both in the oases of the north and along the southeast coast of the peninsula, have yielded evidence of a more complex culture and probably less heterogeneous than it is usually envisaged. These new data invite us to reine the hypothesis of a major upheaval between the 3rd and the 2nd millennia BC, so it is now necessary to make a synthesis of current knowledge about the period in order to propose new approaches to economic, political and social changes that occurred during the Middle and Late Bronze Age.

This study presents the results of an analysis of three Late Neolithic pottery assemblages from Wadi Ziqlab, northern Jordan. These sites were occupied during the 6th millennium BC (calibrated) and are therefore contemporary with sites in other parts of the southern Levant that are attributed to the Wadi Rabah culture. The assemblages are analyzed from a stylistic perspective, broadly defined, which includes an examination of technological style in addition to a more traditional examination of vessel form and surface treatment. Different stages in the pottery production sequence are investigated using a range of analytical techniques, including thin-section petrography and xeroradiography. While there are some similarities between the assemblages, there are also some noticeable differences. The results of the pottery analysis are used to explore the nature of community in the context of the Late Neolithic. A critique of more traditional archaeological approaches to prehistoric communities leads to a re-conceptualization of community that combines interactional and ideational perspectives. Similarities in pottery among the sites, especially technological similarities, suggest that pottery producers may have comprised a dispersed community of practice. At the same time, pottery may have also been a symbolic marker of community boundaries. Differences in pottery among the sites, including surface treatment, may reflect the flexibility of these boundaries as different parts of the dispersed community negotiated their place in it. The presence of variation among contemporary pottery assemblages in a localized area suggests that social organization during the 6th millennium may have been more complex than is normally assumed for the Late Neolithic in the southern Levant. A dispersed community, with its members spread throughout the wadi, would require a sufficiently complex and flexible system of relationships to maintain it. Failing to acknowledge this has contributed to the difficulties archaeologists have encountered when trying to understand the culture-history of the 6th millennium BC in and east of the Jordan Valley.

In the current context of escalating climate catastrophes paralleled with depleting energy resources, degrading fresh water supplies and diminishing agricultural lands, there is an increasing preoccupation with the prospects of a fast approaching ecological global crisis. Arid regions, which under normal circumstances are places of acute extremes, are afflicted by these trends more profoundly. Dryland ecosystems are places where survival hangs on a most fragile equilibrium, therefore any anomaly or scarcity can be detrimental to their viability. Alternatively, due to their unique ecosystem properties, not available in other more moderate environments, deserts can represent places of immeasurable potential for a prosperous subsistence. The Negev desert accounts for two thirds of the land area of Israel and is employed as a case study for this exploration. The thesis investigates the following four narratives: FERTILE VISIONS dissects the ethos of blooming the desert and the inherent contradictions of realized utopias. EPHEMERAL FLOWS constructs a broad framework of the Negev’s ecosystem, while mapping the operating forces and their affect on the system’s stability. VITAL SIGNS curates a catalogue of strategies, systems and technologies in the fields of water management, solar energy and controlled environments. Their juxtaposition starts to suggest plausible hybrids. Finally, EFFECTIVE TERRAINS defines design strategies for new models of desert living, based on integrated infrastructural systems. It envisions a prototype for a community planned through the synthetic interweaving of the existing desert ecosystem with water, energy and agricultural production.

A revision of the author's thesis, Université de Paris. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 347-364).

Middle Holocene climate change forced significant environmental response and influenced human activities throughout southern Arabia. Climate models and proxy data indicate that climate along the southern Arabian peninsula changed from a moist phase, spanning the early to middle Holocene, to an arid phase, which persisted for the last ca. 5,000 years. A weakening and southward shift of the Southwest Indian Monsoon System, forced by northern hemisphere insolation variations in the precession band and/or glacial boundary conditions, is suggested as the mechanism for the abrupt shift to more arid conditions. Geoarchaeological evidence suggests that agriculture was more widespread and evolved alongside the development of irrigation technologies during a period when rainfall was more plentiful than today. Here we investigate the surficial record of the dynamic fluvial response to the late Quaternary climate shift and reconstruct the geochronology of the geomorphic evolution of a significant portion of the ca. 125 km length of Wadi Sana, a north-flowing tributary to the Wadi Hadramout system. Using differential-corrected GPS-based survey, combined with analysis of the sedimentary record, the RASA (Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia) Project has created a paleohydrologic reconstruction of Wadi Sana in order to provide a context for understanding how fluvial landscapes, hydrologic regime, and human activity reacted to ivchanging middle Holocene climate. Radiocarbon and luminescence dating of remnant silt terraces suggests that fine-grained sediment began accumulating on an older (late-Pleistocene) coarse cobble surface between 12,000-7,000 years ago and continued aggrading until about 5,000 years ago. Paralleling the climate shift, Wadi Sana began incising and eroding the thick sediment infilling about 4,500 years ago, which has continued to the present time. Field reconnaissance and map analysis reveals structural and lithologic controls on the source and availability of these fluvial sediments for downstream deposition during the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Hydrologic modeling of active present-day channels within Wadi Sana estimates stream velocities at 2.2 m/s and stream discharges of 444 m3/s. We propose that a change in hydrologic regime, driven by the monsoon shift, is the cause of the middle Holocene channel adjustment from an aggradational to incising mode in Wadi Sana.

Tufa and lacustrine deposits are useful paleoclimate archives in reconstructing the early to middle Holocene climate and paleohydrology of southern Yemen's Wadi Idim and Wadi Sana, which are north-flowing tributaries to Wadi Hadramawt. Numerical age estimates and oxygen-isotopes are used to assess the onset and cessation of tufa formation and reconstruct the environment of lacustrine sediment deposition in the region in order to understand the broader early to middle Holocene hydrologic system.Numerical age estimates from the studied wadis show a correspondence between early to mid-Holocene humid-phase sediment deposition and the northward shift of the ITCZ, as documented in paleoclimate records from other East Africa -- Arabia -- India continental and marine sediments. The interval between ca. 10-5 ka B.P. corresponds to a period of greater availability of moisture from the Arabian Sea region. Increases in precipitation allowed for a lake and wetland systems to develop, and increased spring discharge contributed to the formation of the tufa. Within the lacustrine sediments are ostracodes, mollusks, and flora casts that are found in a much wetter climate compared to today's hyper-arid environment. This early to mid-Holocene humid phase corresponds with a more northerly positioned ITCZ, which shifted south to its present day position around 5,000 yr B.P.Oxygen isotope measurements from ostracods show a range of isotope values from ~ -4.0%â?? at approximately 10 ka B.P. to ~ -6.0%â?? at approximately 5 ka B.P. Theses values represent the early to middle Holocene pluvial phase. Changes in the oxygen isotopic signature represent a change in evaporation or a possible change in source.The early to middle Hol ocene humid phase also corresponds with periods of agricultural activity, which are being investigated by the archaeological team of the Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia Project (RASA). Research into the effects of climate change on human activities, specifically agricultural processes, is the focus of RASA. Southern Arabia offers not only a convergence of three major agricultural regions, but also preserves a sedimentary record of the climate shift that affected the region during the period of study.

In the current context of escalating climate catastrophes paralleled with depleting energy resources, degrading fresh water supplies and diminishing agricultural lands, there is an increasing preoccupation with the prospects of a fast approaching ecological global crisis. Arid regions, which under normal circumstances are places of acute extremes, are afflicted by these trends more profoundly. Dryland ecosystems are places where survival hangs on a most fragile equilibrium, therefore any anomaly or scarcity can be detrimental to their viability. Alternatively, due to their unique ecosystem properties, not available in other more moderate environments, deserts can represent places of immeasurable potential for a prosperous subsistence. The Negev desert accounts for two thirds of the land area of Israel and is employed as a case study for this exploration. The thesis investigates the following four narratives: FERTILE VISIONS dissects the ethos of blooming the desert and the inherent contradictions of realized utopias. EPHEMERAL FLOWS constructs a broad framework of the Negev’s ecosystem, while mapping the operating forces and their affect on the system’s stability. VITAL SIGNS curates a catalogue of strategies, systems and technologies in the fields of water management, solar energy and controlled environments. Their juxtaposition starts to suggest plausible hybrids. Finally, EFFECTIVE TERRAINS defines design strategies for new models of desert living, based on integrated infrastructural systems. It envisions a prototype for a community planned through the synthetic interweaving of the existing desert ecosystem with water, energy and agricultural production.