Grand Séminaire: Pierre Deschamps on the WAO project and water resources

On 11 January 2024, Pierre Deschamps, IRD Research Fellow, CEREGE Climate Team, held the Grand Séminaire at CEREGE.

WAO ooo... the project: or how to examine the question of water resources and their sustainability, in the context of an oasis system in an arid environment

Since 2020, CEREGE has been in charge of the water component of the OASIS programme of the French Development Agency for Al-Ula (AFALULA). Initiated as part of the collaboration with Saudi Arabia and the Royal Commission for Al-Ula (RCU), this research and development programme aims to study the Al-Ula oasis through a holistic approach to the Al-Ula oasis, which is home to the archaeological site of Madâin Sâlih. Better known by the ancient name of Hegra, this major site of Nabataean civilisation in north-west Saudi Arabia was the first Saudi site to be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This multidisciplinary programme brings together archaeologists, geo-archaeologists, palaeoclimatologists, soil scientists, botanists, agronomists, ethnobotanists and ethnologists, and aims to improve our understanding of the Al-Ula oasis ecosystem and provide a knowledge base capable of building a sustainable economic and tourism development model that respects this exceptional environment.

WAO ("Past, present and future Water resources in Al-Ula Oasis") focuses on the study of the current and past functioning of the aquifer system that feeds the Al-Ula oasis ecosystem, and mobilises a wide range of skills from CEREGE and its partners (hydrology, geophysics, isotope geochemistry, palaeoclimatology, modelling). On the one hand, the aim is to assess the current resource and the impact of withdrawals on it in order to produce scenarios for its sustainable management, and on the other hand, to reconstruct the functioning of this hydrosystem in the climatic and environmental context of the last millennia in order to specify the conditions that enabled human occupation of this arid zone and the development of protohistoric societies.