Over Exploitation of Groundwater in the Centre of Amman Zarqa Basin ? Jordan: Evaluation of Well Data and GRACE Satellite Observations.
ordan faces a sincere wa
ter crisis. Groundwater is th
e major water resource in
Jordan and most of the ground water systems
are already exploited
beyond their estimated
safe yield. The Amman Zarqa Basin is one of
the most important groundwater systems in
Jordan, which supplies the three
largest cities
in Jordan with drinki
ng and irrigation water.
Based on new data the groundwat
er drawdown in the Amman Za
rqa Basin is studied. This
basin is the most used
drainage area in Jo
rdan. Groundwater draw
down in eight central
representative monitoring
wells is outlined. Based on almost
continuous data
for the last 15
years (2000?2015) an average drawdown for the whole basin in the order of
1.1 m?a
?
1
is
calculated. This result is in
accordance with results of previous studies in other areas in
Jordan and shows that, until now, no sust
ainable water management is applied.
Groundwater management in such a basin pres
ents a challenge for water managers and
experts. The applicability of
satellite data for estimating large-scale groundwater over
exploitation, such as gravity
products of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
(GRACE) mission, along with supplementary data
, is discussed. Altho
ugh the size of the
basin is below the minimum resolution of GRACE, the data generally support the
measured drawdown.