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Hydrogeological and Hydrochemical Characterization of Mejel Bel Abbes

Aquifer (West-Central Tunisia)

Chapter · January 2022

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-72543-3_123

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 Hydrogeological and Hydrochemical
Characterization of Mejel Bel Abbes Aquifer
(West-Central Tunisia)

Mouez Gouasmia, Abdelkader Mhamdi, Ferid Dhahri,

and Mohamed Soussi

Abstract
The Mejel Bel Abbes region (west-central Tunisia)
constitutes a subsiding lowland filled with Plio-
Quaternary deposits. These deposits contain shallow
aquifer exploited for agricultural and drinking water
purposes. A good management of these groundwater
resources requires recognizing their hydrodynamics and
their chemical processes. The piezometric map shows that
groundwater flows from north to south toward the Gafsa
North plain. The piezometric profile demonstrates that the
piezometric level is related to the topography of the
terrain. Miocene sands and Plio-Quaternary aquifers form
together a single free hydrogeological unit. Chemical
analyses revealed that groundwater within this hydroge-
ological unit is rich in sulphates and chlorides. The total
mineralization of analysed samples highlights a good
chemical quality that remains almost uniform over the
entire Mejel Bel Abbes region. The Plio-Quaternary
aquifer, however, yields groundwater supersaturated with
carbonate minerals and saturated with halite and gypsum.
1 Introduction
The region of Mejel Bel Abbes, located in west-central
Tunisia, is characterized by a semi-arid climate and an
annual rainfall of 200 mm. This context, which is charac-
terized by the great spatial and temporal variability of its
water potential, makes Mejel Bel Abbes (Fig. 1) a region
with relatively variable and limited renewable water
resources, which requires a better evaluation of the aquifer’s
potential.
The most important aquifer in this region is the Plio-
Quaternary, whose water resources are intensively
exploited. The second, the aquifer of Miocene sandstone,
which is characterized by a high porosity and a very large
thickness, is operated only by a single borehole.
In order to better recognize these hydrogeological
potentialities, a hydrogeochemical study was carried out in
the region to identify the hydrodynamism of the Plio-
Quaternary aquifer as well as the chemical character- istics
of these waters.

Keywords

· · ·
2 Materials and Methods
Hydrogeology Hydrochemistry Aquifer Mejel Bel
Abbes The piezometric data used in this study were obtained from
the measurements of 12 available monitoring wells in 2016,
using a manual piezometric probe. Water samples were
collected from nine wells abstracting the Plio-Quaternary
and Miocene aquifers. The laboratory of the Regional
M. Gouasmia (&) ·A. Mhamdi F. · Dhahri Commissariat for Agricultural Development of Kasserine
Faculty of Sciences of Gafsa, University of Gafsa,
Sidi Ahmed Zarroug, 2112 Gafsa, Tunisia performed the analyses of anions and cations using a Dionex
ion chromatography system. The results of the content
M. Gouasmia · A. Mhamdi · M. Soussi
Faculty of Sciences of Tunis, LB18ES07: Sedimentary Basins and assessments of major elements within groundwater samples
Petroleum Geology, University of Tunis El Manar, El Manar II, are used to draw a Piper diagram and some correlation plots
2092 Tunis, Tunisia between major elements. These have been used to investi-
F. Dhahri gate the hydrochemical properties of this aquifer and the
Faculty of Sciences of Tunis, Laboratory 3G (Geodynamics, origin of its mineralization (Shouakar-Stash et al. 2007).
Geo-Digital and Geomaterials), University of Tunis El Manar,
El Manar II, 2092 Tunis, Tunisia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 547
H. Chenchouni et al. (eds.), New Prospects in Environmental Geosciences and Hydrogeosciences,
Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72543-3_123
548
Fig. 1 Piezometric contour map and groundwater flow (2016)
3 Results and Discussion
3.1 Hydrodynamics of the Plio-Quaternary
Aquifer
The piezometric map established in 2016 (Fig. 1) shows a
general flow from N to S with a spill of water from the basin
of Mejel Bel Abbes to the North Gafsa basin. The depression
profile drawn from the piezometric map, from Mejel Bel
Abbes to the plain of North Gafsa, shows that the piezo-
metric altitude is related to the surface topography. The
thickness of the unsaturated zone reaches its maximum at
Mejel Bel Abbes (140 m) and gradually decreases to 50 m
upstream of the plain of North Gafsa. It appears that the
underground flow coming from the basin of Mejel Bel
Abbes has for outlet the region of the threshold of North
Gafsa.
In the south, the piezometric curves are tightening and
showing a relatively stronger hydraulic gradient, drawing a
hydraulic slope more inclined towards the south, then
varying laterally. This variation is explained by the fact that
the Plio-Quaternary filling captured is entirely in the form of
a free aquifer.
M. Gouasmia et al.
3.2 Hydrochemistry
The salinity values of the Mejel Bel Abbes range from 0.83
to 0.97 g L‒1. These values are obtained indirectly from
measured conductivity. The plotted Piper diagram (Simler
2000) shows that the water stored within the Plio-Quaternary
aquifer have SO4-Cl facies (Fig. 2). The graphical repre-
sentation of the hydrochemical analyses of the Schoeler
Berkaloff diagram (Fig. 2) shows more or less parallel
curves. The variations observed reflect the changes in the
lithological nature and local environmental conditions, as
well as geochemical leaching processes and dissolutions that
contribute to the change in the local water composition. The
majority of water samples from the Mejel Bel Abbes aquifer
system have a good hydrochemical quality and indicate that
the origin of the water is the same.
Determining the mechanism of salinization of aquifer
waters involves determining the origin of each chemical
element according to its behaviour with respect to salinity
and other elements.
With the exception of Ca and SO4, all the curves have a
good correlation between the major elements and the sums
of the anions and cations. Indeed, they show their contri-
bution to the acquisition of the salt load of water from the
Hydrogeological and Hydrochemical Characterization of Mejel Bel…
Fig. 2 Piper and Schoeller-Berkaloff diagrams
Plio-Quaternary aquifer. The Na/Cl and Ca/SO4 ratios show
that all of the samples are correlated. This explains the
unique origin of these major elements, which is probably
related to the dissolution of halite and gypsum. For the
Ca/HCO3 and Ca/Mg ratios (respectively, R2 = 0.41 and
R2 = 0.1), the correlations indicate a different origin for
these two elements and do not prove a dissolution of the
dolomites in the reservoir.
The study of the saturation index values shows that the
waters of the Plio-Quaternary aquifer are generally super-
saturated with respect to the carbonate and undersaturated in
minerals or in equilibrium state for the evaporitic minerals
(Gouasmia et al. 2018).
4 Conclusions
The Majel Bel Abbes basin, a depression with high subsi-
dence especially in the central part, is filled with continental
heterogeneous detrital sediments ranging from Miocene to
Plio-Quaternary. These series rest unconformably on the
limestones of the Upper Cretaceous. The Plio-Quernary is
formed by clay sands and sandy clays whose thickness is
variable in places with great power in the centre of the bowl.
The piezometric map showed a general N–S flow towards
the plain of North Gafsa. Based on the piezometric curves
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549
and the hydrodynamic characteristics, we estimated the
exploitable resources to 373 L/s.
The geochemical study concluded that the waters are of
excellent chemical quality since the dry residue is less than
1 g L‒1. It has also shown that the waters of thePlio-
Quaternary and those of the Miocene are SO4-Cl facies. The
Miocene sands and the Plio-Quaternary unit col- lected
from different depths of the aquifer indicate that it
functions hydrogeologically as a single unconfined aquifer
system.
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