Aidarus M. Ismail

  The continued discoveries of new oil, coal, and mineral reserves, improved recycling of materials, and advances in technology in recent years have largely lessened the fears of running out of non-renewable resources.   For instance, the development of technologies including froth floatation for processing certain metal sulphide ores, the Solvent Extraction-Electrowinning process for obtaining copper, and the use of  cyanide  in gold extraction have all made previously uneconomic grades of ore suitable for mining, thus increasing economically viable mineral reserves. However, although mining itself may occur on a relatively small land area, the associated infrastructure and pollution from mining activities have the potential to affect the health of ecosystems and reduce their ability to provide the goods and services necessary for human and environmental well-being. These services include the purification of air and water and the decomposition of waste materials, which can be compro

  Somalia Most of the country consists of a gently southeast dipping plateau, bordered on the north by fault-scarp-bounded mountains near the margin of the Gulf of Aden. The northern mountains are as high as 2,500 m and are drained by north-flowing streams into the Gulf of Aden. The central part of the country is drained by Wadi Nogal, an integrated network of intermittent Streams that flow east toward the Indian Ocean. The southern part of the country is drained by two permanent rivers. River Shebelle and River Jubba, that flow southeast ward to the Indian Ocean. The country is a semi-desert and covered to various degrees by shrubs except for irrigated farmland along the southern rivers and sparse forests in some higher mountains in the north. Northern and Central Somalia has no permanent rivers. The people of this Area depend on water wells and reservoirs to store the annual rain which is sometimes limited. In these areas sometime in the rainy seasons get heavy rain which ca

SUMMARY OF SOMALIA GEOLOGY   Somalia is underlain principally by Mesozoic and Tertiary marine and Continental-margin sedimentary rocks deposited uncomfortably on               Precambrian Metamorphic and igneous rocks. Quaternary and Holocene alluvial and alluvial Deposits cover much of the southeastern coastal area. The Precambrian rocks Are exposed in the northern block-fault mountains and in a broad uplift in the Bur region, along the Indian Ocean in southern Somalia. The structure of the region is dominated by the apparently faultcontrolled, southwest-trending margin of the Indian Ocean; the rifted and block-faulted, east-northeast trending margin of the Gulf of Aden; and the complexly faulted East African Rift on the west. These structures were formed by major crustal plate movements related to formation of the Indian Ocean, Gulf of Aden, and Red Sea during the Miocene. These tectonic features are characterized by normal faulting and isostatic uplift related to regional extensio