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This episode is brought to you by Sweet Water.

Tonight, we'll read about Desert Oasis from a book written by H.J. Luellen Beeknell

and published in 1909.

In ecology, an oasis is a fertile area of a desert that sustains plant life and provides habitat for animals.

Surface water may be present or water may only be accessible from wells or underground channels created by humans.

Let's get cozy. Close your eyes.

Relax your body into the softness of your bed.

Now, take a few deep breaths.

When laboriously traversing the hot and arid plateau of the Libyan desert, our thoughts divided between the fertile plains of the Nile we have left behind and the still far distant oasis,

it is difficult to realize the presence within a distance of a few hundred yards of an abundant supply of the purest water.

Yet there is little doubt that the water bearing beds underlie practically the whole of the Libyan desert,

though it is only on the floors of the depressions that they lie within accessible distance of the surface.

On the high-table lands, the cost of sinking boards to reach the sandstones would be prohibitive.

And without the aid of powerful and costly pumps, the water would not rise to the level of the ground.

But although the subterranean waters of the Great Desert Plateau cannot economically be made available at the surface, it must not be forgotten that the deeply buried sandstones of these regions must act to a great extent,

as storage reservoirs capable of replenishing the beds underlying the oasis depressions, from which large volumes of water are continuously drawn by the numerous artesian wells.

The essential conditions required to produce an artesian basin, which, when tapped by borings, will produce self-flowing wells, are the presence of strata of sufficient porosity to carry water,

enclosed above and below by beds of sufficient impermeability to prevent the escape of that water.

The outcrop of the porous beds in some higher and distant region, with an adequate exposure to an abundant source of water, whether rain, river or lake.

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