Abstract
The Ourika River is an important tributary of the Tensift River in the water-stressed region of Marrakesh (Morocco). The Ourika river flow is dominated by the snow melt contribution from the High Atlas mountains. Despite its importance in terms of water resources, the snow water equivalent (SWE) is poorly monitored in the Ourika catchment. Here, we used MERRA-2 data to run a distributed energy-balance snowpack model (SnowModel) over 2000–2018. MERRA-2 data were downscaled to 250-m spatial resolution using a digital elevation model. The model outputs were compared to in situ measurements of snow depth, precipitation, river flow and remote sensing observations of the snow cover area from MODIS. The results indicate that the model provides an overall acceptable representation of the snow cover dynamics given the coarse resolution of the MERRA-2 forcing. Then, we used the model output to analyze the spatio-temporal variations of the SWE in the Ourika catchment for the first time. We suggest that MERRA-2 data, which are routinely available with a delay of a few weeks, can provide valuable information to monitor the snow resource in high mountain areas without in situ measurements.
Highlights
The snowpack is an important resource in many semi-arid and Mediterranean catchments, mostly because it provides meltwater runoff for irrigation during the crop growing season
We showed the application of a distributed snowpack model in the snow-dominated Ourika catchment in the High Atlas
We focused on the Ourika catchment because there is a lack of knowledge regarding the snow dynamics in this catchment snow melt is an essential water resource to sustain irrigation in the semi-arid Haouz plain
Summary
The snowpack is an important resource in many semi-arid and Mediterranean catchments, mostly because it provides meltwater runoff for irrigation during the crop growing season. The Tensift basin is a major basin in Morocco covering 20,450 km around the city of Marrakesh from the High Atlas mountains to the Atlantic coast. In this semi-arid region of Morocco, the precipitations are scarce, while the evaporative demand is high [3]. Due to the orographic enhancement of the precipitation, the mean annual precipitation measured at Oukaimeden-club alpin francais (CAF) (2650 m.a.s.l.) in the High Atlas region of the Tensift basin ranged between 300 mm and 900 mm over 1989–2007 [5]
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