Abstract
This study explores the occurrences of land subsidence in response to dropping groundwater levels in the central part of the Tigris–Euphrates basin. We estimated the groundwater depletion related to human and climate drivers between 2003 and 2017 based on estimates from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and two global hydrological models (NOAH-3.3 and WGHM-2.2d). The cumulative displacement was calculated using Small Baseline Subset Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SBAS-InSAR) for 96 interferograms, which were generated by 31 images acquired by the Sentinel-1 satellite. The results show that the basin is experiencing a decline in groundwater storage at a rate of −7.56 km3/year with a total loss of 106.81 km3. This depletion rate has led to inelastic compaction and has resulted in subsidence near the city of Baghdad at a rate of −10 mm/year. The measured coherence phase between the two signals is ~0.67, and the depletion precedes the subsidence by ~1.5 months. The new data from GRACE-Follow on, Sentinel-1, and the piezometric water level could help to constrain the rate of depletion and displacements in the basin. Combining these remote sensing techniques provides an independent tool for water management in areas where in-situ data are scarce.
Highlights
The Tigris–Euphrates basin (TEB) is transboundary basin bounding two river systems (Tigris and Euphrates), which originate from eastern Turkey, follow through Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran and end in the Persian Gulf [1]
The WGHM estimate of groundwater storage (GWS) was compared the result derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), which with the uncertainty obtained from Equation (3)
We present the simulated GWS from WGHM-2.2d indicated that the model underestimates the component magnitude
Summary
The Tigris–Euphrates basin (TEB) is transboundary basin bounding two river systems (Tigris and Euphrates), which originate from eastern Turkey, follow through Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran and end in the Persian Gulf [1]. The scarcity of surface water is putting more pressure on groundwater aquifers, which has resulted in a higher extraction rate [4] and decreases in storage by −25.6 ± 3.7 km3 /year, with a total loss of −76.9. The decline in groundwater level to historical levels without replenishment could lead the aquifer sediments to compact and the land to subside [5]. Such phenomena are persistent in urban and agriculture regions throughout the world, such as the San Joaquin Valley [6], Santa Clara
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