Western Desert base maps: Special Research Project 69, Subproject D 1, period 1984 - 1987

The East Oweinat area is located in the south-west part of Egypt and to the south of the New Valley Area. It lies between latitudes 22° - 00' N. and 24° - 00' N. and longitudes 28° - 00’ E. and 30° - 00' E. It is considered to be an arid area and it covers a total area of about 40,000 km2 , i.e. about 10 million feddans. The only available topographic maps for this area are on the scales 1 : 500,000 and 1 : 1,000,000. The results of the study of soil resources illustrate the various land tracts of the arable land which have been classified according to the F.A.O. standard (1976). Soil classification and land capability maps produced as a result of this study show the existance of about 3.3 million feddans of promising sand soils. About 1.5 million of this acreage is considered to be of first priority with a deep soil section of over 90 cms. Several production and observation wells have been drilled in this area. The results of the ground water resources evaluation were that the aquifer saturated thickness ranges from 100 mts. to 700 mts. The average optimum rate of pumping per well was found to be 300 m3 /hr. with an anticipated drawdown ranging from 6 mts. to 27 mts. The T.D.S. of water ranges from 220 to 700 ppm. The model developed to evaluate the ground water resources concluded that a long term extraction of 4.7 x 106 m3 /day is certainly available. This is sufficient to irrigate 189,000 feddan. About 900 kms. of cold mix asphaltic roads were constructed to link this area to the existing asphaltic road at Kharga and Dakhla. A pilot farm near one of the water production wells was chosen to test several kinds of plants using solar energy to pump water. There is no doubt that such results indicate the potential of this area for future rehabitation and development in Egypt, so an important part of the total area was selected to construct topographical maps on the scale 1 : 100,000 using Landsat images.