What is Aswan Dam?
What is Aswan Dam?
The Aswan Dam, or more specifically since the 1960s, the Aswan High Dam, is the world’s largest embankment dam, which was built across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, between 1960 and 1970. Like the earlier implementation, the High Dam has had a significant effect on the economy and culture of Egypt.
Who designed the Aswan Dam?
Walter Jurecka
Aswan High Dam/Architects
What are the two main benefits of the Aswan High Dam?
The collective benefits of Aswan High Dam (AHD) are increasing the Egyptian water resource, controlling and regulating floods, protecting Egypt from potential frequent droughts, increasing agriculture productivity, and completely regulating the river water.
How does the Aswan Dam affect Egypt?
The dam benefits Egypt by controlling the annual floods on the Nile and prevents the damage that used to occur along the floodplain. The Aswan High Dam provides about a half of Egypt’s power supply and has improved navigation along the river by keeping the water flow consistent.
How many dams are in Egypt?
Water v Electricity Over the past 50 years, six Nile Basin countries have built 25 hydroelectric dams.
Why was Aswan dam built?
The High Dam was constructed between 1960 and 1970. Its aim was to increase the amount of hydroelectric power, regulate the flooding of the Nile and increase agricultural production. The Aswan High Dam is 3,830 metres long, 980 metres wide at the base, 40 metres wide at the crest (the top) and 111 metres tall.
What is the importance of the Aswan High Dam?
With a reservoir capacity of 132km³, the Aswan High Dam provides water for around 33,600km² of irrigation land. It serves the irrigation needs of both Egypt and Sudan, controls flooding, generates power, and helps in improving navigation across the Nile.
What is bad about the Aswan Dam?
The main negative impacts of AHD are alluvial soil water logging, building up of soil salinity, overuses of chemical fertilizers and pesticides due to preventing of fine earth fertility particles by the dam, which affects the food productions and farmers health.
What is Aswan High Dam in Egypt?
Aswan High Dam. noun. a dam on the Nile forming a reservoir (Lake Nasser) extending 480 km (300 miles) from the First to the Third Cataracts: opened in 1971, it was built 6 km (4 miles) upstream from the old Aswan Dam (built in 1902 and twice raised). Height of dam: 109 m (365 ft)
Who called the Aswan High Dam ‘the Eighth Wonder of the world’?
Egyptian President Nasser and Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev at the ceremony to divert the Nile during the construction of the Aswan High Dam on 14 May 1964. At this occasion Khrushchev called it “the eighth wonder of the world”.
What is the Arab-Soviet Friendship Monument in Aswan?
A central pylon of the monument to Arab-Soviet Friendship. The memorial commemorates the completion of the Aswan High Dam. The coat of arms of the Soviet Union is on the left and the coat of arms of Egypt is on the right. The Soviets also provided technicians and heavy machinery.
How did the construction of the High Dam help Egypt?
The dams also protected Egypt from the droughts in 1972–73 and 1983–87 that devastated East and West Africa. The High Dam allowed Egypt to reclaim about 2.0 million feddan (840,000 hectares) in the Nile Delta and along the Nile Valley, increasing the country’s irrigated area by a third.
