• English Site
• >World
• >Libya
• >

  Deserts of Libya Under Threat: A Sea without Water

Deserts of Libya Under Threat A Sea without Water

By Florian Harms

Part 2: Driving for Days without Human Contact

All of Europe could fit in this area, which also includes western Egypt and northwestern Sudan, and the region has some of the world's lowest precipitation rates. It can be decades between rainfalls, and the humidity lies in the single digits. In the summer, temperatures can skyrocket to 55 degrees Celsius (131 degrees Fahrenheit), and it gets really cold at night because there is no cloud cover to lock in the warm air. In these conditions, the up-to-50-degree fluctuations in temperature can split rocks apart. The erosion becomes sand, which is carried by the wind and gathered into mounds, which ultimately become sand dunes.

But sand dunes -- which the Libyans call "Idhaan" or "Bahr bilaa Maa," meaning "waterless sea" -- cover only 20 percent of the Sahara's surface. More commonly you will find high plateaus of rocky crags or broken stone, such as basalt or lava. You can hobble over these black stone chips for hours in an all-terrain vehicle and only progress a few kilometers.

When the day is done, you feel each and every one of your bones. But the largest swathes of the Sahara are made up of lowlands of fine gravel, where you can drive straight for hours without coming into contact with a single person.

What is today nothing but a wasteland was not always so arid. Over the course of the Earth's history, climate changes covered the Sahara in water a number of times. Even today, you can still find petrified shells in the sand -- and the water has not completely disappeared. Petroleum companies drilling for oil have found gigantic deposits of fossil water -- that is, groundwater that has remained underground for millennia -- from subterranean lakes, which formed during the most recent ice age between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago.

This treasure might just be Libya's most important capital, even more significant that oil and gas. That is because here, in the most arid country of the Maghreb, only 4 percent of the land can be used for agricultural purposes. Each year, the country is forced to import tons of grains, vegetables and fruit to feed its ballooning population.

In order to respond to his country's lack of water resources, President Moammar Gadhafi has initiated the "Great Man-made River" project. The project aims to pump out the desert's hidden waters and to use enormous pipes to channel it to the coastline, where 90 percent of the country's inhabitants live. Despite countless setbacks, the first part of the $25 billion (€19.8 billion) project has already entered into operation. But there continues to be much disagreement about how long the water will last. Geologists, for example, fear that the natural wonder known as the Ubari Lakes will fall victim to sinking groundwater levels.

It would alter the face of the Sahara forever.

For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol.

Post to other social networks:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•