With the increasing exploitation scope and intensity, the shallow resources would be exhausted in the future; and the deep mining will become an essential choice.
The scale of urbanisation (>10 million residents) in conjunction with the lack of infrastructure for water-related services is seen to have fostered a dependency on the shallow groundwater resources and, in turn, led to a tangible impact on the groundwater domain, which is difficult to quantify and study.
Deep oil and gas resources are increasingly becoming more important as the exploration potential of shallow resources faces ever growing challenges after many years of research and production.
Although surface water is the traditional source for Egypt's irrigation, the shallow fresh groundwater resources underlying the delta are increasingly burdened by groundwater pumping, which increases interest in the status of the groundwater resources.
Geothermal heat pumps are the key to the utilization of the ubiquitous shallow geothermal resources.
A naive view would oppose the close-to-nature, deep-rooted and forest-committed Menominee to the shallow-rooted, ignorant and resource-depleting majority-culture sportsmen.
However, the exploited shallow groundwater resources (<200 m depth) are vulnerable for contamination.
"[T]hese blocks represent the last remaining shallow-water resources of this magnitude in the Nigerian continental shelf and therefore lease renewal represents a unique opportunity for value capture for the Government," the report's authors wrote.
Given the vulnerability of surface water sources to the changing climate, shallow groundwater resources, which currently play an important role in providing sustainable drinking-water sources across Africa, will continue to do so in the future (Lapworth et al. 2013).
Nevertheless, the uncontrolled rapid use of shallow groundwater resources to heat or cool urban environments can cause thermal pollution that will limit the long term sustainability of the resource.
