The Kufra Basin in the Sahara Desert of Libya is one of the most heavily irrigated oases in the world. The Libyan government enacted a plan in the 1970’s to enable agricultural cultivation in the desert by extracting water from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, a non-renewable source of fossil water located beneath the surface. Because the area receives only one inch of rain per year, the aquifer is now nearly dried up.