Water Budget Assessment within a Typical Semiarid Watershed in the Eastern Mediterranean

Abstract

Adequate evaluation of blue water fluxes in arid and semiarid areas is crucial for operational purposes such as evaluation of rain-fed agriculture, grazing potentials and for designing and construction of water dams. Evapotranspiration, runoff and deep recharge in such catchments are poorly understood due to the lack of meteorological and/or hydrological measurements. Modeling using proper parameterizations would probably be a viable alternative to gauge such resources. The present paper examines the water budget in a typical medium size semiarid watershed located in the mountainous areas in Jordan using a transient model. The watershed was discretized into 1 km side length, and the model was run for six continuous years using a daily time step. Many parameterizations used in the model were based on field measurements carried out in this particular environment where measurements of many hydrometeorological parameters are scarce. Comparison between simulated results and long-term flow observations show that the model performs adequately. Results indicate that evapotranspiration, surface runoff, and deep recharge constitute around 87.5, 7.5 and 5 % of areal precipitation, respectively. Significant runoff occurs over steep terrains where vegetation cover is limited or devoid, implying the production of large quantities of sediments, which would adversely affect water quality and the life span of dams constructed over these catchments.

Energy balance and snowmelt drivers of a marginal subalpine snowpack

“…Modelling of runoff from snowmelt in regions where the snowpack is marginal has frequently involved the use of temperature-index models (TIMs; Bormann et al, 2014;Dunn & Colohan, 1999;Oroud, 2015;Samuels, Rimmer, Hartmann, Krichak, & Alpert, 2010;Schreider, Whetton, Jakeman, & Pittock, 1997). These are based on data that are widely available (Hock, 2003) and may be utilised without knowledge of the local energy balance.…”

Evaporites: Relative humidity control of primary mineral facies revisited

“…A small change in T a appears to have a minor influence on β . It should be indicated that in this sensitivity analysis, atmospheric relative humidity is assumed constant, and thus, the actual vapour pressure ( e a ) of air is allowed to respond to air temperature because ambient water vapour pressure synchronizes closely with air temperature even in arid climates (e.g., Allen et al, ; Oroud, ). If the ambient vapour pressure was kept constant following the temperature departure, then the effect of air temperature increase would have more effect on brine activity (not shown in Figure ).…”

Effect of Land-use Change Scenarios on Nutrients and TSS Loads

“…As typical for Mediterranean climate watersheds, the pollutant loads are predominantly contributed by a limited number of intense flood events, whereas the contribution of all of the other events is negligible. While somewhat limited, a number of studies have applied catchment level models to Mediterranean watersheds (Gikas et al 2006;Pisinaras et al 2010;Licciardello et al 2007;Bisantino et al 2013;Chamoglou et al 2014;Oroud 2015). These studies indicated that the model predictions were suitable for runoff and satisfactory for the sediment and nutrient loads.…”