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Mapping groundwater dynamics in Iraq: integrating multi-data sources for comprehensive analysis
Iraq is known for its dry climate, often ranging from arid to semi-arid, and has a long history of struggling with water scarcity. Therefore, the presence of groundwater resources plays a vital role in ensuring water security in the area. However, increased demand for groundwater, fueled by populati...
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Published in: | Modeling earth systems and environment 2024-06, Vol.10 (3), p.4375-4385 |
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Main Author: | |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Citations: | Items that this one cites |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | Iraq is known for its dry climate, often ranging from arid to semi-arid, and has a long history of struggling with water scarcity. Therefore, the presence of groundwater resources plays a vital role in ensuring water security in the area. However, increased demand for groundwater, fueled by population growth and climate change, has resulted in declining groundwater levels. Analyzing Iraq’s groundwater faces persistent challenges due to limited data availability and accessibility issues. Moreover, existing well data typically offers single readings without a consistent time series, and each well has a different observation time. Without continuous and systematic groundwater monitoring, accurately assessing groundwater levels poses difficulties for water resource managers and researchers. To address this gap, this paper seeks to provide an overview of Iraq’s current groundwater situation. The study utilizes data from 517 observation wells, along with soil-specific yield, soil moisture, and GRACE satellite data, to estimate groundwater level time series. These estimates were validated by comparing them with the observed groundwater level time series. In addition, the research examines current spatial groundwater levels and analyzes groundwater flow patterns across Iraq. Furthermore, groundwater depletion is assessed by examining changes in groundwater levels from 2003 to 2023 using GRACE satellite data. The paper aims to offer valuable insights into Iraq’s groundwater dynamics. Results indicate that the study can estimate Iraq’s water levels with a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.53 [m] and a coefficient of determination (R
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) value of 0.996 when compared with observed data. However, validation errors vary across regions due to differences in observed water table time series lengths, observational inaccuracies, and estimation parameter errors such as specific yield, soil moisture, and GRACE data. This study provides detailed data on current groundwater levels, depths, and changes across Iraq, which can be beneficial for various purposes including agriculture, water management, risk assessment, and land use planning. |
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ISSN: | 2363-6203 2363-6211 |
DOI: | 10.1007/s40808-024-02029-9 |