Water Balance in the Northern Wadi Araba Basin

Tariq M. Ghonmieen

Ground water, North Wadi Araba Basin, Water balance , Water resources, Water levels.

Jordan is among the countries that suffer from scarcity in their water resources because they fall within the dry and semi-arid zones, in addition to the urgent need evaluating groundwater and surface water resources for management and usage within the most urgent sectors especially in Wadi Araba basin, where there is variation in the air elements and water balance elements between the eastern highlands of the basin which form part of the Shara Mountains and the western areas of the basin, is dominated by dry and hot desert climate. In spite of the importance of the basin and its breadth and the diversity of its land surface, there is a lack of available information about the quantity of groundwater, surface, snow and rain, and the springs that flow in its valleys. In addition to the fluctuation and irregularity in the distribution of quantities of precipitation during different years, and the implications for agricultural pastoral potential, and land use, as well as the loss of large amounts of rainwater and springs through evaporation.

In this paper, the water resources in the Wadi Arba basin were evaluated. Moreover, many aspects of water usage and quality, have been studied. The obtained results show that it is scarce, look out, and bad management of the water resources. However, there is variance in the decreasing of water levels of the aquifer wall in the Wadi Araba basin where the variance was between 0.03 m year to 0.5 myear.