A groundwater flow model for the New Valley area with a telescoping mesh on Kharga Oasis, Western Desert, Egypt

In Kharga Oasis (Western Desert, Egypt),,the most extensively developed oasis since 1960, groundwater is extracted from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer, one of the largest groundwater systems in Sahara Desert. To assess the sustainability of the present and future groundwater extraction for the large-scale development projects in southwestern Egypt, a regional-scale groundwater flow model with a telescoping mesh was accomplished. Based on the hydrogeological data of more than six hundred wells, the results of the steady-state simulation indicate that recent groundwater formation in the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer of Egypt is impossible. A refined grid and a groundwater flow simulation for the coming hundred years suggest that there is no real danger of groundwater depletion. However, the problem of the increasing depth to the water-table due to the drawdown in the potentiometric surfaces will become more serious in the future.