Abstract
Abstract Groundwater is generally influenced by overexploitation and climatic stresses particularly in arid and semi-arid areas of the world. The present research was conducted to identify the relative contribution of drought and overexploitation to groundwater budget deficit in an unconfined aquifer system. In order to simulate groundwater, the simulated recharge from WetSpass-M model was applied in the MODFLOW model along with other required packages. Moreover, the groundwater budget deficit caused by stressors was quantified through the use of calibrated groundwater model predictions. In order to better understand how the stressors affect the groundwater deficit, the aquifer was divided into Clusters 1, 2, and 3. Locally, the results showed that the contribution of stressors to groundwater budget deficit was the highest in Cluster 1 due to the groundwater overexploitation and quick reaction of the groundwater level to the droughts. Overall, this research showed that both drought and overexploitation, with an average of 2.44 and 3.32 million cubic meters, respectively, played a significant role in groundwater storage deficit. Furthermore, the effect of groundwater overexploitation was approximately 36% more than droughts.
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