The study area is located at the western side of Lake Nasser province, 110 km to the southwest of Aswan city. It lies from the southern part of Sin El Kadab plateau to Gebel Um Shagher southwards, covering a surface area of about 350 Km2. The objectives of this study are the determination of the main aquifer and the effect of the subsurface structures on it by using geophysical methods, as well as clarifying the hydrogeological setting in the area to select the best sites for drilling new wells.
Two land magnetic profiles were carried out with a unit station separation of 100m and 21 Vertical Electrical Soundings (VES) of Schlumberger configuration with a maximum distance between the current electrodes (AB) of 2000m. The magnetic interpretation shows that the South east profiles of the area has high magnetic values which represent high structures, while the North and North West portions represent structural depressions.. The interpreted results of the geoelectric survey show that the succession consists of three geoelectric zones (“A", “B" and “C"). The surface zone “A" is composed of dry alluvium of Quaternary deposits and dry sandstone, clayey sand and sand intercalations and shale. Zone “B" is the saturated unit which consists of Nubia sandstone, clay, clayey sand interbeds. While zone “C", is composed of clay followed by basement rocks. The area is influenced by several faults, which resulted in uplifting of the basement rocks at different levels that affected the succession and hence the water bearing aquifer.
The potentiality of groundwater is good in the north western part of the study area due to presence of thick saturated sandstone and clayey sand beds, while it is limited in the southern part due to the up-lift of basement and thinning of the water bearing formation.