Groundwater modeling of Saq Aquifer Buraydah Al Qassim for better water management strategies

Abstract

Saudi Arabia is an arid country. It has limited water supplies. About 80-90% of water supplies come from groundwater, which is depleting day by day. It needs appropriate management. This paper has investigated groundwater modeling of Saq Aquifer in Buraydah Al Qassim to estimate the impact of its excessive use on depletion of Saq Aquifer. MODFLOW model has been used in this study. Data regarding the aquifer parameters was measured by pumping tests. Groundwater levels and discharge of wells in the area for the year 2008 and previous record of year 1999 have been collected from Municipal Authority of Buraydah. Location of wells was determined by Garmin. The model has been run for different sets of pumping rates to recommend an optimal use of groundwater resources and get prolonged life of aquifer. Simulations have been made for a long future period of 27 years (2008-2035). Model results concluded that pumping from the Saq Aquifer in Buraydah area will result into significant cones of depression if the existing excessive pumping rates prevail. A drawdown up to 28 m was encountered for model run for 27 years for existing rates of pumping. Aquifer withdrawals and drawdowns will be optimal with the conservation alternative. The management scheme has been recommended to be adopted for the future protection of groundwater resources in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Middle-late Quaternary palaeoclimate variability from lake and wetland deposits in the Nefud Desert, Northern Arabia

“…Blunt, 1881), with the town of Jubbah forming an oasis that has been repeatedly occupied over recent centuries and millennia . Due to modern agricultural practices, however, water now lies at a depth of at least ~50m, with recent groundwater depletion models (Al Salamah et al, 2011) suggesting that drawdown may currently be as great as 1 m per year. At the eastern end of the basin, fossil spring outcrops are reported by Crassard et al (2013), which represent areas of focused discharge of the Saq aquifer.…”

Spatial distribution of dominant ions in the groundwater in Banyumudal Groundwater Basin, Central Java, Indonesia

“…Furthermore, it needs to perform groundwater management in order to always get water in sufficient quantity and with the quality that is adequate to the health requirements. Sustainable management and development of water resources is a major issue all over the word [9].…”

Application of a modified conceptual rainfall–runoff model to simulation of groundwater level in an undefined watershed

“…Physically-based numerical models (Al-Salamah et al, 2011;Beven et al, 1987;Kinzelbach, 1986;Refsgaard et al, 1999;Mohanty et al, 2013;Onta and Gupta, 1995;Reichard, 1995;Rodríguez et al, 2006;Xu et al, 2012) are used for characterizing the groundwater system; however, for reliable predictions, this approach requires large quantities of accurate data both to identify the physical properties of the domain and model parameters and to calibrate the model simulations (Yoon et al, 2011). Another approach for predicting groundwater level uses several black-box model, such as artificial neural network (Daliakopoulos et al, 2005;Emamgholizadeh et al, 2014;Nayak et al, 2006), to simulate the nonlinear relationship between input and output series.…”