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| 001 | 77091 | ||
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| 005 | 20260610134803.0 | ||
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_aen _2iso639-1 |
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| 050 | 4 | _aDT | |
| 100 | 1 |
_aBall, John, _d1872-1941 |
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| 245 | 1 | 0 | _aProblems of the Libyan Desert |
| 264 | 1 |
_aSalt Lake City, UT : _bProject Gutenberg, _c2025 |
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_a1 online resource : _bmultiple file formats |
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_atext _btxt _2rdacontent |
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_acomputer _bc _2rdamedia |
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_aonline resource _bcr _2rdacarrier |
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| 490 | 1 | _aProduced from The Geographical Journal, v. 70, 1927. | |
| 500 | _aRelease date is 2025-10-20 | ||
| 508 | _aGalo Flordelis (This file was produced from images generously made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library) | ||
| 520 | _a"Problems of the Libyan Desert" by John Ball is a scientific publication written in the early 20th century. It synthesizes exploration, surveying, and geology to explain the Libyan Desert’s great depressions, artesian waters, dunes, and rumored “lost” oases, while evaluating whether basins like Qattara and Wadi Rayan could be harnessed for irrigation, drainage, or power. The work also challenges persistent myths—most notably that a former Nile branch crossed the western desert—by using new contour mapping and hydrological reasoning. The opening of the work lays out a dozen central questions about the region and explains how recent triangulation and improved barometric leveling enabled a first, provisional contoured map. It lists a chain of sub‑sea‑level basins culminating in the vast, newly confirmed Qattara Depression, outlines the major escarpments and highlands (Gilf Kebir, Oweinat, Kissu), and uses these data to dismiss the old “dry river” idea of a Nile branch to the Mediterranean. The author attributes the depressions chiefly to wind erosion acting on soft strata breached through structural weaknesses, illustrating a subtle deepening mechanism observed in coastal “bosom” basins, and then weighs engineering schemes: Wadi Rayan as a sump looks plausible, while a Qattara sea and hydropower face prohibitive topography and cost. He traces the artesian system to the Erdi–Ennedi highlands, derives static water‑level contours from wells and lakes, explains the persistence of desert lakes via underground inflow, and notes the Nile’s capture of warm artesian water near Dakka. From these contours he rejects deep coastal artesian wells, warns that well interference and external drains may lower oasis heads, and begins to test traditions about “Zerzura” against the new topographic and hydrologic evidence. (This is an automatically generated summary.) | ||
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_pOriginally published: _cLondon: The Royal Geographical Society, 1927 |
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| 653 | _aLibyan Desert | ||
| 830 | 0 | _aProduced from The Geographical Journal, v. 70, 1927. | |
| 856 | 4 | _uhttps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.230921 | |
| 856 | 4 | 0 | _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77091 |
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