Water wells’ exploitation and its impact on the drying up of foggaras: The case of the foggara of M’ghaer, Timimoune, District of Adrar, Algeria

Abstract

For a long time, man had to explore groundwater by constructing special hydraulic works. Thus, in ancient times, hydraulic civilizations such as the foggaras in Iran, Egypt, China and Latin America were born. In the Algerian Sahara, the foggara has played a leading role in the field of abstraction of groundwater distribution and sharing through formal and strict rules. Today, this technique has been disappearing and drying up. This decline does not only increase year by year, there were over a thousand foggaras in the early 1960s, but today only 915 foggaras have been listed for all those regions. Among the factors favoring the decline of foggara is the exploitation of water by deep holes drilled near the latter. In this article, we try to show the impact of drilling on the foggara.