C O N T E N T S - Physical Land Resources - Vrije Universiteit Brussel

construction and industrial purposes. In this research work the stabilized soil thatproduced by this technique have found to be a good candidate for replacing cement tobuild up an in-situ water harvesting system or to use the soil itself as a catchmentsurface at the southern Jordan desert. Hence the results of this research work haveshown low open porosity, low water absorption, and high dry and wet compressivestrength values for the mineral polymer produced. For the mineralogical, chemical andgeotechnical evaluation study, two soil samples were brought from southern Jordandesert (HS-1 and HS-2). The analyses showed abundance with the kaolinite mineral as61.8% and 58.9% for HS-1 and HS-2 samples, respectively. A maximum dry strength of36.04 MPa, wet strength of 17.55 MPa, water absorption of 7% and open porosity of15% were achieved after optimizing the mixing water content as 22%, soil to sand ratioas 100:200, sodium hydroxide content as 22%, filling material with M2 and M31 sandmixture as 20%:80%, and 24 hours curing period at 80°C.GONZALEZ-QUIJANO ManuelGroundwater modelling of the Tsinkanet Catchment: a MODFLOW Approach toEvaluate the Impact of Small Reservoirs on Groundwater RechargePromotor: F. De SmedtThe construction of small micro-dams has been stopped in northern Ethiopia becausesuch reservoirs were not holding enough surface water for irrigation purposes. Themain problem of such dams is leakage and/or seepage which in turn may be regardedas something beneficial for groundwater abstraction. Thus, the aim of this thesis is tomake a groundwater model in order to calculate with the help of zone budget thegroundwater recharge due to the reservoir. The low values obtained are due to the rainyseason where the observation heads for the calibration process were. It is expected toobtain higher values if a new model is calibrated for the longer dry season.- 31 -