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Uncharted waters: Probing aquifers to head off war
Posted by New Scientist: Chelsea Wald on February 18th, 2012
New Scientist: DEEP beneath the eastern Sahara, the Nubian Sandstone aquifer was in trouble. By the early 2000s, the aquifer - one of the largest and oldest groundwater deposits in the world, which supplies Libya, Egypt, Chad and Sudan - was emptying fast. Egypt was tapping the aquifer to feed its growing desert cities far from the Nile. Libya, whose only other water source is the salty Mediterranean, was drawing water off by way of an underground network of pipes and aqueducts known as the Great Man-Made River,...