Abstract
In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), water resources are limited in hyper-arid regions, which are dependent on groundwater (88 percent), desalination water (8 percent) and wastewater treatment (4 percent). The management and development of these resources are essential to sustain population growth and grow the agricultural, industrial, and tourism sectors. Since the groundwater is the most valued water resource in the country, the majority of researchers are focused on the water quantity and water quality in this region in order to find the best solution to face this issue. In 1953 the Ministry of Agriculture and Water was established and assigned the mission of identifying and managing the water resources, aiming to ensure their maximum efficient development and use. The economic future of the Kingdom and the survival of the its people depend alike on the availability of water, its prudent use, and its rational development through long-term program that aim to help fulfill the overriding goal of the government, which is to establish and maintain a better life for the people of the Kingdom. Previous researchers have focused on the groundwater resources in the Saq aquifer region in northern KSA, where the depletion is the highest, during the past 10-20 years. However, most studies focused on groundwater quality, and not quantity, which is very important in the monitoring and management of water resources, but one the other side monitoring these resources are significant to sustain and develop our resources. Since the Kingdom does not have a robust database for continuous monitoring groundwater, it is critical to find appropriate scientific methods to monitor the groundwater permanently that can be used to give us a big picture in the present time and in the future to deal with this issue. Therefore, the overall objective of this dissertation was to design suitable methods for an integrated monitoring mechanism of the groundwater quantity and quality using geophysical and geochemical information of the aquifers and their water resources, hydrologic modeling, satellite Remote Sensing data, and Geographic Information systems (GIS). In order to achieve this, I combined laboratory analysis of water quality variables with modeling of the water resources patterns, and validated the findings with field-level water use and withdrawal data, to develop a suitable scenario to monitor groundwater in this region continuously. The work has been described in the following three manuscripts, as per the Graduate School Manual guidelines: MANUSCRIPT І (published in
Highlights
The scarcity of freshwater is an issue of critical importance in arid and semi-arid countries (Sultan et al, 2011; 2014)
This study extends the investigation of the individuals who have already utilized Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data to monitor the Saq aquifer region (e.g., Sultan et al, 2013) by [1] using enhanced state of the art GRACE global mass concentration solutions, [2] using yields from an improved global land surface model, Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS), to isolate the groundwater storage, [3] developing the area of the study zone to incorporate the Saq aquifer in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Jordan, and [4] Broadening the time traverse utilized by Sultan et al, (2013) by three years
Mascons solutions, the negative trend areas are closely centered over the Saq aquifer, whereas these areas extend beyond the spatial distribution of the Saq aquifer in the case of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) mascons and University of Texas Center for Space Research (UT-CSR) spherical harmonic solutions
Summary
The scarcity of freshwater is an issue of critical importance in arid and semi-arid countries (Sultan et al, 2011; 2014). Our study extends the investigations of Sultan et al, (2014) by [1] utilizing enhanced state-of-the art TWSgrace solutions; the global mass concentration solutions (mascons), [2] utilizing outputs from several LSMs; four versions of the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS), to isolate the GWSgrace, [3] expanding the study area to incorporate the Saq aquifer in the KSA and Jordan border region, [4] broadening the time interval by three years, and [5] validating GRACE observations of groundwater variations with field water level data from regional supply wells. The freshwater resources of Saudi Arabia, for example, are primarily those found in groundwater aquifer systems; only about 5% comes from desalination plants (Ouda, 2013) These limited resources are extremely vulnerable to both natural interventions (e.g., rainfall/temperature patterns, duration, and magnitude) and anthropogenic ones (e.g., population growth, overexploitation, and pollution). We set out to accomplish the following: [1] examine the areal extent of the Saq aquifer recharge domains using geologic, climatic, and remote sensing data; [2] investigate the origin of, and modern contributions to, the groundwater in the Saq aquifer system by examining the isotopic compositions of groundwater samples collected from, and outside of, the Saq aquifer; and [3] estimate, to first order, the magnitude of modern recharge to the Saq aquifer utilizing data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and applying the continuous rainfall- runoff model, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT)
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