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Section 3: Case studies in land surface evaluation |
Department of Geography, University of Durham, Durham, UK
Purpose of survey
Water is one of the most valuable physical resources in the arid zone. Much effort is made by engineers to maximize availability and minimize wastage. In the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan water scarcity has been exacerbated in recent years by rapidly rising demand. In the early 1990s total national water consumption in Jordan approached 730 x 106 m3. It is estimated that demand will rise to 1200 x 106 m3 by the year 2000. In the northeast Badia of Jordan there are two major sources of water (Al-Homoud et al. 1995). Due to the topographic effect of the Jebel Druz, precipitation totals exceed 500 mm a-1 in the north, declining to <50 mm a-1 in the south. During winter months, runoff can be considerable but no reasonable data exist on parameters such as wadi discharge, infiltration rates and drainage basin contributing areas under storms of a given magnitude. Groundwater is found in three aquifers. Numerous government-operated and private wells have recently been drilled to exploit groundwater. There is little information on the recharge:extraction balance, changing spatial patterns of water availability and temporal changes in water quality, despite trends which hint at a depleting resource.
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This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
