Projecting water availability and quality for reuse under scarcity in the Bahr El-Baqar catchment in Egypt using the SIWARE model.
Abdul-Muttalib MA, El-Saadi A, El-Gazzar H, Refaey MA
Irrigation Management
Roughly 10% of the world's food exports pass through Egypt's Nile Delta, and the irrigation water feeding those farms is already too salty for safe use—further cuts to the Nile's water budget will make it saltier still, shrinking harvests of the wheat, rice, and vegetables that stock grocery shelves worldwide.
Egypt recycles water that drains off farm fields back into irrigation canals, but that recycled water picks up salt along the way. Scientists built a computer model of two key water stations in the Nile Delta to predict how bad the salt problem gets if Egypt receives less river water than usual—reductions of up to half the normal amount. One station is already dangerously salty and gets worse fast; the other holds up better but still loses nearly half its water volume, meaning less water available for crops either way.
Key Findings
The Bahr El-Baqar Feeder station already has baseline salinity (~2,200 ppm) above Egypt's 2,000 ppm legal limit; a 50% water allocation cut pushes it above 3,000 ppm—a 36% increase—while cutting available flow by 47%.
The Bilad El-Ayad pump station is more resilient: the same 50% cut raises salinity by only 16.4%, keeping it under the regulatory limit, though discharge still falls 45%.
Membrane-based pretreatment can cut salinity by up to 82%, and upstream source control can reduce it by 75.67%, offering practical tools to keep irrigation water within safe limits.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers modeled how cuts to Nile freshwater allocations—up to 50%—would degrade the salinity and volume of irrigation water at two critical nodes in Egypt's Nile Delta, and identified a portfolio of interventions to keep that water usable for crops.
Abstract Preview
Agricultural drainage water reuse is a vital strategy for mitigating freshwater scarcity in Egypt. This study applies the SIWARE (Simulation of Water Management in the Arab Republic of Egypt) model...
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