Pressing water scarcity in Jordan rapidly increases the demands of marginal water resources for the agricultural sector. Water management studies reveal that no single source could fully solve the nation's water shortage and many integrated actions are needed to ensure water availability, suitability and sustainability. Yet, among these options treated wastewater has the largest potential to augment water supply in the near future, thereby narrowing the gap between available freshwater and total demand. Indeed, treated wastewater could be a valuable source for irrigation in the agricultural sector and an increasing percentage of irrigated areas, A. Alfarra
High water consumption and specific soil requirements warrant a long-term planning for date palm cultivation. Hence, this study presents a detailed procedure to calculate water and land balances that assess the suitability for date palm cultivation in three districts of the West Bank. It applies crop response functions to relate spatially explicit land suitability and salinity levels to net revenues. Furthermore, it compares net present values and benefit–cost ratios under various discount rates and salinity levels to assess economic feasibility. Date palm cultivation in Jericho-Al Ghoor is economically achievable, but additional land amendments are required for expansion in Nablus and Tubas districts. Prevailing average salinity levels have minor negative influence on future date palm developments.
About eighty percent of wastewater is discharged into the environment untreated. Many challenges are decelerating solving the global sanitation problem, such as the financial limitations and lack of technical capacities. Parallel to this, many countries are facing a growing demand on their limited water resources. Higher water demand and limited availability leads to over-abstraction and deterioration in the availability and quality water resources. In this situation, wastewater can be a new water source. Therefore, there is a growing interest in finding low-cost, easy-to-operate and sustainable sanitation solutions. Constructed wetlands (CWs) in recent years have proved their capability in the sanitation sector as an appropriate sanitation system in different contexts, CWs have proved their ability to treat several types of wastewaters for several decades. Several benefits and facts, such as the low construction and operational costs of CWs, low-energy, and less operational requirements, have raised the interests in CWs as a treatment technology. Several studies have investigated CWs suitability based on different sustainability indices (technical, social, environmental, etc.). In this paper, a comprehensive review covers the definition, types, treatment processes, sustainability criteria, limitations, and challenges of CWs. The paper also focuses on climate change resilience and circular economic approach under the technical and financial criteria, respectively.
Abstract-Water in Jordan is scarce, yet key to its economic development. A fast growing population and expanding agricultural sector create demands for new water resources. We present a Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) model for the Jordan Valley (JV) to evaluate alternative water supply options. WEAP accommodates the extensive primary and secondary spatial data sets behind our empirical analysis and allows the simulation of various water supplys and demand scenarios. This paper reports on the implementation and calibration of the WEAP model against dam operating rules, showing that it is possible to reproduce historical dam volumes accurately enough by analysis. The paper then describes five alternative water supply scenarios for the JV: business-as-usual, increasing treated wastewater in irrigation, climate change, and two combined scenarios-climate change with increasing reuse, and altered patterns of agriculture to calculate the impact on the demand-supply gap by the year 2050.
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