The existing different human activities and planned land uses put the groundwater resources in Jordan at considerable risk. There are evidences suggesting that the quality of groundwater supplies in north Jordan is under threat from a wide variety of point and non-point sources including agricultural, domestic, and industrial. Vulnerability maps are designed to show areas of greatest potential for groundwater contamination on the basis of hydrogeological conditions and human impacts. DRASTIC method incorporates the major geological and hydrogeological factors that affect and control groundwater movement: depth to groundwater (D), net recharge (R)

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Wind-farm planning optimization is important for decision-making concerning regional energy planning in developing countries. This process is governed by restrictions on site selection based on land suitability metric variables, wind turbine technology variables, and land-use governing criteria. This study aims to create a framework for land appropriation strategies for locating optimum sites suitable for wind farms. It is using Jordan as an Area of Interest (AOI), where the scope is to illustrate how this framework will employ wind turbine energy to positively enhance the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The methodology employs thirteen GIS thematic layers with a 250-m spatial resolution to substantiate how site-specific criteria, turbine type, and turbine hub height variables are determining factors in the optimal solution. This method involves selecting relevant factors, database construction, data layer generation and preparation, numerical ranking and weighting of each factor, and computation of the potential wind farm locations map by overlaying all the thematic GIS layers. The results showed that the establishment of wind farms would not only meet the AOI’s growing energy needs, rather exceed them to generating income for the developing nation. The results of the feasibility study will boost the national GDP by 3.4%; where, for example, one governorate alone could produce 274.3% of the total required national consumption at a turbine hub height of 50 m. The study attests to a valuable framework that can be implemented elsewhere to establish regional power sustainability and feasibility for other nations. The results show that an added land-use layer indicating the potential value of land in terms of its suitability for establishing wind farms should be considered in future sustainable regional planning studies when considering networks for smart cities, industrial cities, smart agriculture, and new agglomerations.

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A Roman theater is recently being excavated at Beit-Ras/Capitolias in Jordan, which is one of the Decapolis cities, founded before A.D. 97/98. This is an archaeoseismological study that aims to investigate the temporal and intensity impacts of past earthquakes on the theater’s existing structure. A rich set of earthquake archaeological effects were identified, including deformed arches, tilted and collapsed walls, chipped corners of masonry blocks, and extensional gaps, indicating a seismic intensity of VIII–IX. The study identified at least two significant destruction phases that took part in the damage of the theater, which may have contributed to the abandonment of its major use as a theater at different periods. This is based on field observations of construction stratigraphy and damage features, the assessment of the observed destruction, and literature reports. The date of the first phase is bracketed between the establishment of the city (before A.D. 97/98) and the date of an inscription found in the walled-up orchestra gate (A.D. 261). The most likely candidate earthquake(s) for this immense destruction are the A.D. 233 and/or 245 events. Other moderate and less damaging events may have also occurred within the region but are not mentioned in available catalogs. After a major restoration, another earthquake phase occurred between A.D. 261 and Late Roman–Early Byzantine times, when the scaena wall tilted and collapsed, rendering the building useless and beyond repair. Subsequently, the theater was then filled with debris and was abandoned. The most probable causative earthquake of the second phase of destruction is an event in A.D. 363. The article provides a rich discussion of potential causative earthquakes, based on archaeoseismological, construction stratigraphy observations, and calibrated intensity of historical earthquake-based attenuation modeling. It identifies the potential phases and types of destruction and reuse.