The area under investigation lies in the southeastern part of the Nile Delta. It is bounded by longitudes 31o 00', 31o 45' E and latitudes 30 o 00', 30o 45' N. The water resources in the study area are both surface water (canals and drains) and groundwater withdrawn from the Quaternary aquifer, which represent one of the most important groundwater resources for domestic and agricultural purposes in Egypt. The main objective of the present study is to predict the future changes in groundwater levels and quality of the southeastern part of the Nile Delta aquifer. Three suggested scenarios of pumping with different abstraction rates for years 2000 through 2030 have been explored by Visual MODFLOW (version 3.0) and MT3D models. These scenarios include: first, maintaining the current pumping rate increasing by 10% from the period 2000 to 2030; second, increasing the pumping rate by 50%; third, increasing the pumping rate by 100%. Results indicate that the first and second scenarios have little effect on drawdown reaches to 0.5m and 1.8m, respectively. The third scenario gives the worst drawdown reaches to 14m and should be avoided. Mass transport of total dissolved solids, SO4, Na, Cl, Fe, Mn, Al and NO3 have been investigated using MT3D. Simulation results indicate that the concentrations of TDS and different elements increases with time and move with groundwater flow direction |
