The scarcity of water resources in Egypt is considered to be the main obstacle to development projects, particularly in desert lands, which cover 96% of the Egyptian land. The government tends to carry out several development projects to reduce the population intensity around the Nile Valley.
West El-Minia governorate desert fringes are one of the promising development areas where the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation carried out a 30,000-acre reclamation project near the study area included the 1,500,000 acres. The study area defined by the following coordinates, Latitudes 28.3488° N & 28.5576° N and longitudes 30.1928° E & 30.4573°E. The main objective of this study is to understand the vertical and horizontal extension of the subsurface succession and groundwater aquifer conditions in the study area.
To achieve the objective of this study, 46 TEM stations were carried out using the TEM-Fast 48HPC device. In the study area, the main water-bearing formations have been specified to be the fractured limestone aquifer of the Middle Eocene age Samalut Formation composed of shallow marine limestone with shale bed intercalations. 29 TEM stations out of 46 recorded the existence of water content in the fractured limestone aquifer, and these stations are concentrated in the eastern part and follow the NE-SW direction of faults, and recorded in a limited number of TEM stations in the western and southern parts of the study area.
The TEM stations recorded water in the limestone aquifer ) Samalut Formation) cover about 60 % of the Study area that was almost regarded to be the most impacted area with fractures and faults. And these locations are suggested for drilling productive groundwater wells.