Resources and Water Sharing in the Oasis of Beni Abbes (Southwest ofAlgeria); Oasis System in Decline

摘要

Water plays a major role in the Algerian Sahara; it is the main cause of sustaining life of all living in an arid environment. Farmers in Beni Abbes exploiting groundwater for irrigation and to supply the urban center of the oasis, now the size of the palm grove of Beni Abbes shrink by over 50%, that is to say from 40 hectares to 20 hectares only, the oasis suffers from several causes of degradation, which are many: the overexploitation of groundwater aquifers by the anarchical use of pumps and boreholes, salinity of water and soil after the lowering of the groundwater level, the narrowness of the land due to inheritance, the negligence of the earth by the youth due to lack of their production efficiency. The fellahs of the oasis used several traditional techniques to bring water from the groundwater aquifers to its land and dwellings, as foggaras, the pendulum wells (shadoof wells), the accumulations basins and open channels (seguias). Our objective of this work is to study the current state of the oasis and the impact of the use of modern irrigation systems on water and soil of the oasis.