9 Cowboys help Egypt find new sources of water: The Kharga Experience By Dr. Priyank Jaiswal There is an increasing need for finding new freshwater resources Worldwide, especially in arid regions. Experts suggest that meeting basic human needs for freshwater remains a huge challenge and that more than 1 billion people globally still lack safe drinking water. Finding new freshwater resources is even more pressing in Egypt, which gets almost all of its freshwater from the River Nile. Currently, about 99% of Egypt’s 85 million population live along the Nile Valley and the Nile Delta which constitute only ~5% of the 1 million km2 area of Egypt. The main reason for this high population density along the River Nile is due to the availability of water as well as fertile lands for agriculture. However, overcrowding of the Nile Valley threatens the very existence of the people due to contamination of water from fertilization of the fields. OSU scientists are taking the lead to help solve water problems in Egypt through a US-Egypt grant funded by NSF. The crane used as a weight-drop source to get the energy out to 4 km. Recently, I was in Egypt with Raj (PhD student) acquiring seismic data in Egypt. I am co-PI together with Jeff Brynes and Mohamed Abdelsalam in a project led by Estella Atekwana on determining groundwater recharge mechanism in an Egyptian oasis, the Kharga depression. The wireless recording system against the backdrop of a small farm in the oasis. My job was to collect seismic data to image the sedimentary section down to the basement to understand the recharge mechanism of this overstressed acquirer. We are trying to understand what role faults play in keeping the Kharga Oasis alive. In the last year, Shawna Parks, the MS student on this project on the remote sensing aspect, had developed some basic facture density maps using freely available satellite data. From her maps, we realized that to further characterize the faults at a fundamental level we needed seismic profiles that are at least 4 km long. Our neighboring Ponca City is home to a company called iSeis, which makes one of the world’s most advanced wireless acquisition systems. The owner, Dr. John Jiles, is a long-time friend and benefactor of OSU. I met him at the New Orleans SEG and discussed our needs. Not sure if it was the beer, the city, or his love for OSU that he decided to loan me $300,000 worth of equipment to take to the Egyptian desert. Hats off to his spirits. Top left: Scott and me fixing a channel. Bottom left: Drs. Gamal (left front) and Assam (right front) and the hired-hands. Right: Raj and I setting the shot point location Field was fun, it always it. A typical day would start at 5 AM in the morning and ends whenever folks can go no further. The first few days were spent in deciding where to shoot. It is not that the Egypt desert had any shortage of barren land, our source, which was a crane, had very restricted mobility. Finally, we found an intersection where a) the roads were straight out to at least 5 km, b) the traffic could be momentarily stopped for shooting and c) the ranchers/farmer/date-growers along the road were excited about a seismic shoot. Then we started shooting. The crane took half hour to move from one spot to another, which meant we could not do more than 20-25 shots a day. I have always found acquisition folks to be very patient and persistent; now I know why. After 14 days of back breaking work, we finally acquired two- 4 km long profiles. In the process we lost two batteries (someone needier than us borrowed them without informing us), one cable, broke two axels, damaged a pickup. What kept us going was the excellent data quality – we could see clear diffraction patterns in the raw data representative of basement faults. In 14 days, we had become a family. The cook, a middle-aged woman named Nagla, would make sure everyone was happy at the dinner table (Raj got a vegetarian option every day). Magdy would get up before all of us and make sure our day started with warm bread. Drs. Gamal and Assam (colleagues from Assuit University) made sure that every shot was taken as perfectly as possible. The hired-hands were on their toes all along. Neither Raj not Scott nor I knew Arabic, but we never had any problems explaining anything to anyone. On a related note, I must say that I found myself in the company of friendliest people ever. After the acquisition ended, our crew was very to see us go. All’s well that ends well. We are now working day and night to process the data and finally understand the life of the Kharga aquifer.
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