Challenges to estimate surface- and groundwater flow in arid regions: The Dead Sea catchment

Siebert, Christian; Rödiger, Tino; Mallast, Ulf; Gräbe, Agnes; Guttman, Joseph; Laronne, Jonathan B.; Storz-Peretz, Yael; Greenman, Anat; Salameh, Elias; Al-Raggad, Marwan; Vachtman, Dina; Zvi, A. Ben; Ionescu, Danny; Brenner, Asher; Merz, Ralf; Geyer, Stefan

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2014.04.010

Cited by 38 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…The main water inflow to the Dead Sea is the Jordan River, but through anthropogenic interferences the discharge of the Jordan River into the Dead Sea decreased by 90 % down to 60-400×10 6 m 3 a −1 (Asmar and Ergenzinger, 2002;Holtzman et al, 2005) compared to its natural discharge before 1955. Further natural inflow by groundwater discharge and surface runoff is in the range of 235-243 × 10 6 m 3 a −1 (Siebert et al, 2014). As the Dead Sea is a terminal lake, no natural outflow exists, but water is withdrawn from the lake for mineral and potash production.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dead Sea evaporation by eddy covariance measurements vs. aerodynamic, energy budget, Priestley–Taylor, and Penman estimates

Vüllers

Nied

Corsmeier

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. The Dead Sea is a terminal lake, located in an arid environment. Evaporation is the key component of the Dead Sea water budget and accounts for the main loss of water. So far, lake evaporation has been determined by indirect methods only and not measured directly. Consequently, the governing factors of evaporation are unknown. For the first time, long-term eddy covariance measurements were performed at the western Dead Sea shore for a period of 1 year by implementing a new concept for onshore lake evaporation measurements. To account for lake evaporation during offshore wind conditions, a robust and reliable multiple regression model was developed using the identified governing factors wind velocity and water vapour pressure deficit. An overall regression coefficient of 0.8 is achieved. The measurements show that the diurnal evaporation cycle is governed by three local wind systems: a lake breeze during daytime, strong downslope winds in the evening, and strong northerly along-valley flows during the night. After sunset, the strong winds cause half-hourly evaporation rates which are up to 100 % higher than during daytime. The median daily evaporation is 4.3 mm d−1 in July and 1.1 mm d−1 in December. The annual evaporation of the water surface at the measurement location was 994±88 mm a−1 from March 2014 until March 2015. Furthermore, the performance of indirect evaporation approaches was tested and compared to the measurements. The aerodynamic approach is applicable for sub-daily and multi-day calculations and attains correlation coefficients between 0.85 and 0.99. For the application of the Bowen ratio energy budget method and the Priestley–Taylor method, measurements of the heat storage term are inevitable on timescales up to 1 month. Otherwise strong seasonal biases occur. The Penman equation was adapted to calculate realistic evaporation, by using an empirically gained linear function for the heat storage term, achieving correlation coefficients between 0.92 and 0.97. In summary, this study introduces a new approach to measure lake evaporation with a station located at the shoreline, which is also transferable to other lakes. It provides the first directly measured Dead Sea evaporation rates as well as applicable methods for evaporation calculation. The first one enables us to further close the Dead Sea water budget, and the latter one enables us to facilitate water management in the region.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dead Sea evaporation by eddy covariance measurements vs. aerodynamic, energy budget, Priestley–Taylor, and Penman estimates

Vüllers

Nied

Corsmeier

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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“…Scenario analysis according to prognostic changes of 20−30 % less annual mean precipitation in the Levant (Christensen et al 2007-based on MMD-A1B simulations) will have different impacts on eastern and western sides of the Dead Sea. While mean annual recharge contributing to available groundwater resources will reduce from currently *44 mm/a to 22−13 mm/a on the western side, the amounts will reduce from *32 mm/a to 15−12 mm/a on the eastern side (Siebert et al 2014a). Since already today the regional available groundwater resources by far not cover the demand, the prognosticated decrease in precipitation and resulting recharge and groundwater availability will have tremendous socio-economic and ecological impacts on the region that even more require a sustainable groundwater management.…”

Section: Groundwater Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The calibration was pursued at catchments with available hydrographs and subsequently regionalised to the entire western drainage basin (1,443 km 2 ), resulting in a mean annual surface runoff volume of 15.4 × 10 6 m 3 a −1 for the period of 1977−2010. The considerable differences between both models, applied in the western drainage basin document the importance of long-term precipitation datasets (Siebert et al 2014a).…”

Section: Surface Runoffmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multidisciplinary Investigations of the Transboundary Dead Sea Basin and Its Water Resources

Siebert

Rödiger

Geyer

et al. 2016

Integrated Water Resources Management: Concept, Research and Implementation

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Israel, the Palestinian Authorities and Jordan exploit the transboundary water resources of the Dead Sea basin. Our aim was to add reliable numbers to the water budget of the lake, despite the complicated integrative work and data acquisition due to the tense political situation. We here outline four parts of the project that generally concern surface and groundwater influx to the Dead Sea: (i) direct and non-direct measurements and hydrological modelling to quantify surface runoff, (ii) chemical fingerprinting to characterize groundwater origin, flow, and evolution between recharge and discharge areas, (iii) thermal remote sensing approaches to precisely identify location and abundance of groundwater discharge and (iv) groundwater modelling to quantify discharge volumes. The major outcomes are: (i) total mean annual runoff volumes from side wadis (except the Jordan River) entering the Dead Sea amounts to approximately 58−66 × 10 6 m 3 a −1 , (ii) area normalised recharge amounts differ on both sides being *45 mm/a at the western side and *32 mm/a at the eastern side, (iii) modelled groundwater discharge volumes from Upper Cretaceous aquifers from both sides are in order of magnitude of 177 × 10 6 m 3 a −1 .

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“…The Dead Sea is the lowest lake on Earth, whose level reached −432.93 m mean sea level on 1 November 2018. This terminal lake covers an area of about 625 km 2 (Figure ), reaches a maximum depth of 300 m, and its water balance is very much affected by the hydrological regime of its basin (Siebert et al, ). Due to a long‐term negative water budget, salinity of that terminal lake reaches 347 g/l (Ionescu et al, ) making the lake brine supersaturated with respect to halite, which precipitates on the lake floor (Anati, ).…”

Section: Research Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Discharge estimation of submarine springs in the Dead Sea based on velocity or density measurements in proximity to the water surface

Munwes

Geyer

Katoshevski

et al. 2019

Hydrological Processes

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The Dead Sea is a closed lake, the water level of which is lowering at an alarming rate of about 1 m/year. Factors difficult to determine in its water balance are evaporation and groundwater inflow, some of which emanate as submarine groundwater discharge. A vertical buoyant jet generated by the difference in densities between the groundwater and the Dead Sea brine forms at submarine spring outlets. To characterize this flow field and to determine its volumetric discharge, a system was developed to measure the velocity and density of the ascending submarine groundwater across the center of the stream along several horizontal sections and equidistant depths while divers sampled the spring. This was also undertaken on an artificial submarine spring with a known discharge to determine the quality of the measurements and the accuracy of the method. The underwater widening of the flow is linear and independent of the volumetric spring discharge. The temperature of the Dead Sea brine at lower layers primarily determines the temperature of the surface of the upwelling, produced above the jet flow, as the origin of the main mass of water in the submarine jet flow is Dead Sea brine. Based on the measurements, a model is presented to evaluate the distribution of velocity and solute density in the flow field of an emanating buoyant jet. This model allows the calculation of the volumetric submarine discharge, merely requiring either the maximum flow velocity or the minimal density at a given depth.

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Challenges to estimate surface- and groundwater flow in arid regions: The Dead Sea catchment

Cited by 38 publications

References 43 publications

Dead Sea evaporation by eddy covariance measurements vs. aerodynamic, energy budget, Priestley–Taylor, and Penman estimates

Dead Sea evaporation by eddy covariance measurements vs. aerodynamic, energy budget, Priestley–Taylor, and Penman estimates

Multidisciplinary Investigations of the Transboundary Dead Sea Basin and Its Water Resources

Discharge estimation of submarine springs in the Dead Sea based on velocity or density measurements in proximity to the water surface

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