Irrigation project in Saudi Arabia

Hello Hendrik.

Why do you suggest it is an irrigation project?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation_in_Saudi_Arabia

altough it can be a cover project for something else......

Thanks for the link - It is even worse than I suspected.

"It is even worse than I suspected."

Worse?

What do you mean, worse?

How can irrigation of the desert be a bad thing?

If it was extended to cover the whole desert wouldn't it help reduce global warming by acting as a carbon sink, as well as providing forest/food?

Reforesting the desert? I can't think of anything better.

There would not be much carbon to sink there. In any case not enough to have a positive effect on the so called "global warming".

Irrigation development is good only if it is sustainable and most of it would not be.

The cost of development of the system and infrastructure would have been enormous.

How much did it contribute to the higher oil prices?

That is what centre pivots look like from a dizzy height.

If you zoom in you can even see partial circles.

Each dot is a 80 to 100 ha pivot requiring about 160 l/s or as a rough guess more than about 1,000,000 cubic meters of water a year. (a surface dam 12m deep/300m wall / fetch of 1000m)

Hendrik

These are pivot-merrygoround types of irrigation sets...each one may have a well or a series of pivots may draw from the same pump set. Generally they are drawing from "fossil water" of poor and declining groundwater. Some around Riyadh are drawing from rising groundwater tables fed by imported water through the septic tasnk systems in Riyadh, <25% of the total capital sewage goes to sewers.

Many farms which were subsidized heavily by the govt. for the production of $16/bushel wheat are no longer operting as the water gave out or went saline-hypersaline...

BVery similar to what happened to the Central US/Hi Plains Ogalalla formation.

TOM

Hi ctwiliams

Their planing was really poor (even malicious).

They cannot use all the products themselves and have to export and cause subsidized damage to farming economics in other countries.

From wiki I see that they are doing alfalfa, even sharing a resource would require 15000 m³ per ha/year. (or more)

I wonder what the value of the infrastructure would be if the bulk of the irrigation has to stop. (Guessing 1000KVA per circle)

Using the sewage / grey water is however wise and sustainable.

i would like to know that do you have any office in riyadh we are hercules metal company limited here in riyadh working as metal fabrication and all kinds of machining and surface treatment here in riyadh saudi arabia

sales engineer

imran mushtaq

hemetco@yahoo.com

Well at least they are trying..Desalination is not unheard of..Perhaps if they made the desert bloom the situation in the middle east could be tempered..The kingdom is not small land wise and could potentially offer a solution to the truly visceral dislike shown by the two major ethnicities of that area ensnared in a complex struggle that appears to be over the right to have land to grow on as a people ..Course i'm just looking at what i read and hear about...Regards MW

Engineers generally seek ancient river channels now buried by the sand seas. The fossil waters mined in these projects accumulated during periods of wetter climate in the Pleistocene glacial epochs, between 10,000 to 2 million years ago, and are not being replenished under current climatic conditions. The projects, therefore, will have limited production as the reservoirs are drained.