Groundwater recharge zones mapping using GIS: a case study in Southern part of Jordan Valley, Jordan
Abstract This paper aims at mapping the potential groundwater recharge zones in the southern part of Jordan Valley (JV).
This area is considered as the most important part for agricultural production in Jordan. The methodology adopted in this
study is based on utilizing the open ended SLUGGER-DQL
score model, which was developed by Raymond et al (2009).
Geographic information systems were used in this study to
build up the different layers of this model and to create the
potential groundwater recharge zones. Based on the generated
SLUGGER-DQL potential map, it was found that about
70.8 % of the investigated area was categorized as high potential for groundwater recharge, 18.7 % as moderate, and 10.5 %
as low potential for groundwater recharge. To validate the
model results, sensitivity analysis was carried out to assess
the influence of each model parameter on the obtained results.
Based on this analysis, it was found that the slope parameter (S)
is the most sensitive parameter among SLUGGER-DQL model
parameters, followed by water level in summer (L), well density (D), water quality (Q), runoff availability (R), land use/land
cover, geology (GE), whereas the lowest sensitive parameter is
the geology parameter (GE). Moreover, the parameters R, D,
and Q show the lowest effective weights. The effective weight
for each parameter was found to differ from the assigned
theoretical weight by SLUGGER-DQL index model