Using electricity consumption as a tool for groundwater ABSTRACTion in Abu Dhabi Emirate farms, UAE

• Published in: Desalination and water treatment 2022-07, Vol.263, p.207-213
• Main Author: Dawoud, Mohamed A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Electrical use; Groundwater use; Irrigation; Water demand
• ISSN: 1944-3986; 1944-3986
• DOI: 10.5004/dwt.2022.28232

Farm irrigation for agricultural crops such as vegetables, palm trees for date production, and Rhodes grass for camel fodder, currently (2019) is the largest use of groundwater in Abu Dhabi Emirate. Each farmer was permitted to drill two wells within the farm boundary for irrigation groundwater supply [1]. In practice, many farms have more than two wells because farmers drill new wells to replace dry or low-yielding wells, because of the belief that more wells increase the amount of groundwater available to the farm, and because there is no enforcement of the two-well rule. Because the farms are closely spaced in regular grids that extend over large areas, well interference can be substantial in and around the farming districts, and groundwater-level declines can be large. At present there are more than 24,000 farms in Abu Dhabi Emirate, consuming about 2,100 million m3 of groundwater from more than 54,000 ABSTRACTion wells. Farm area in Abu Dhabi Emirate increased from 35,000 ha in 1996 to 120,000 ha in 2006, with most of the increase occurring in Al Ain region. The typical citizen farm was a 183-m by 183-m plot of leveled land surrounded by a concrete and block wall and date palm, fodders and vegetables were the primary crops. All of these have no water flow meters to measure the real ABSTRACTion. To estimate the groundwater ABSTRACTion, groundwater wells electric use records for 2011 to 2018 were used to estimate groundwater use at selected pilot farms in Al Ain region. The high correlation between the amount of irrigation groundwater produced and the amount of electricity consumed at the studied farms offered the possibility of using farm electric records to estimate historical and current groundwater ABSTRACTion in farming districts that have substantial concentrations of farms. The compiled records begin in 2011 and includes historical meter readings for about 20,000 farms, forests, and rural wells, comprising about 940,000 total readings. The data was filtered to extract only data for farms that were constructed as typical citizen farms with the combination of date palm and grass crops similar to the mixed farms previously studied and for which irrigation efficiency was estimated. Electric use for these farms was estimated on an annual basis for 2011–2018 for each of 9 farming districts in the pilot project. More than 900,000 farm electric meter readings were collected and analyses during this study. Based on a previous investigation that showed gro