Abstract
Jordan is characterized by severe weather conditions, therefore great temporal and spatial variations in rainfall; runoff and evaporation amounts are expected. Water harvesting has been practiced in Jordan throughout history for both irrigation and household purposes. A major research project was carried out in the Jordanian Badia on site selection criteria for rain water harvesting systems based on the integration between indigenous knowledge and the use of Geo-informatics. This work was followed by conducting a geophysical and soil investigation for five potential sites. In this study, GIS was used to investigate the potential of having enough runoff in the five selected sites to establish water harvesting dams based on rainfall, evaporation data and catchments’ areas for the selected sites. It was found that the estimated runoff that could be harvested on annual basis at these sites varies between 0.2 Million Cubic Meters (MCM) in Alaasra site to 0.82 MCM in Al-Manareh (Al-Ghuliasi) site. This indicates that these sites have the potential for small scale water harvesting that could be utilized by local livestock owners in the area to water their livestock.
Highlights
Arid lands have not invested in hydrological data acquisition such as flood volumes and rates, rainfall intensities and volumes, etc
The annual runoff volume for a catchment is estimated as follow: Runoff Volume = Catchment Area Annual Rainfall Annual Runoff Coefficient
Five catchment areas for suggested water harvesting sites in the Northern Jordanian Badia were investigated and characterized in order to determine whether these sites have the potential for establishing water harvesting schemes
Summary
Arid lands have not invested in hydrological data acquisition such as flood volumes and rates, rainfall intensities and volumes, etc. Hydrological data collection such as rainfall intensities and flood volumes started in Jordan not long ago and it is concentrated in the humid parts of the country. In the last few years, the Badia started to receive more attention in documenting natural resources. This was as a result of the high population pressure in the limited urbanized areas of the country and the need to utilize the Badia for future development. Flood volumes were not recorded in the Badia areas except in very few cases where limited time records were taken in small areas for specific projects [1]
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