Evaluation of drought characteristics in Iraq by analysis annual growing season of Self-Calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (SC-PDSI) for three climatic zones using run theory method. The efficiency of SC-PDSI for drought monitoring was examined from compared with Rainfall Departure from the mean (RD) for three zones (Arid and Semi-Arid, Steppes and Desert) for the period 1981-2015, were derived from Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The spatial interpolation techniques in ArcGIS package has been used, to cover the whole extent of country and extracting the zones. Statistical methods were applied to compute the probability of drought events at every zone. The results showed the years 1999, 2000, 2008 and 2009 experienced droughts in all zones except the desert zone where was experienced severe drought in 2012, while the years 1982 and 1988 experienced received precipitation above-average in all zones. The values of standard deviation of precipitation were compared with precipitation anomalies for each zone, the drier seasons are (2007-2008) and (1998-1999) in all Zones. The wetter seasons are (1987-1988) in Arid and Semi-Arid and Steppes zone, (1994-1995) and (1997-1998) are wetter seasons in Desert zone. Using run theory, the steppes zone have experienced more severe droughts than other zones evaluated in this study and the most susceptible areas to dry spell are steppes and Arid and Semi-Arid Zones during study period. While the desert zone experienced less droughts.

The present work evaluated the groundwater quality index (GWQI) depending on some physicochemical analyses of thirteen groundwater samples in the Zubair district in Basra Province, Iraq. The collected groundwater samples were subjected to an extensive physicochemical analysis to evaluate the characteristics of water for drinking purpose according to Iraqi standard. For calculating the (GWQI), twelve water quality parameters were considered; turbidity, pH, chloride, total dissolved solids, total hardness (TH), electrical conductivity (EC), sodium, sulphate, phosphate, calcium, nitrate, and magnesium. The analysis of the results reveals that all the samples surpassed the portability of drinking water limits. High values of the (GWQI) in the obtained groundwater samples could possibly be caused by the higher values of electrical conductivity, total hardness, chloride, total dissolved solids and sodium within the groundwater. The calculated GWQI values ranged from 73.36 to 595.92. The pollution index (PI) was calculated for the study area with values ranged from 2.97 to 8.26. Correlation coefficients amongst the chosen water parameters exhibited some strong relationships. Finally, the analysis shows that the groundwater in this particular area needs to be treated before its consumption, and in addition, it usually needs to avoid the hazard of contamination. Principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) indicate that the acquiring-data from groundwater samples are explained 90.5 % of the variance in the data with a four-component system that explains a large portion of the total variance of collected data.

Fluidized bed reactor (FBR) is an attached growththe system used mainly for biological treatment of industrialwastewater of high organic content. These wastewaters areusually resulted from refineries and milk, starch, and olive oilindustries. The objective of this study is to investigate the use offluidized bed reactor for treating sanitary sewage. The study wasaccomplished using a pilot plant of the FBR. The pilot plant wasconstructed and installed in Hamdan Sewage Treatment Plant inBasrah governorate. That was to maintain continuous source ofsettled sewage which is the influent to the FBR. The period ofplant operation was nine weeks. During, this period, the plantwas operated at three phases of different conditions (up the flowvelocity and recirculation ratio). To study the performance ofFBR, the main measured parameters were; BOD, DO, VSS, pH,and temperature. The most important conclusions of this studyare; (1) the maximum efficiency of BOD removal is 78.6% whichwas obtained for hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 24min andupflow velocity of 1.59m/min, (2) the effluent BOD values duringphases-1 and 2 of plant operation match that of stabilizationponds and trickling filters and during phase-3 matches thatactivated sludge process, (3) during all operation phases, thevalues of effluent pH are within the limits specified in nationalstandards of secondary effluents, (4) as F/M increases, theefficiency of BOD removal decreases and the maximumthe efficiency of BOD removal (78.6%) was obtained at F/M ratioequals 23.47 day-1, and (5) the HRT of fluidized bed reactor is onorder of minutes, while, the values of HRT of activated sludgesystems and stabilization ponds are on the order of hours and days,respectively.