Water Accounting Plus (WA+) through Remote Sensing in the Yarmouk Tributary Basin

Coping with the issue of water scarcity and growing competition for water among different sectors requires effective water management strategies and decision processes. ‘Getting it right’ becomes doubly important when dealing with intenational transboundary rivers. The Yarmouk tributary to the Jordan River is one highly exploited in the Middle East, and is enveloped by ambiguous treaties and decades of violent and non-violent conflict. Seeking to chart a more sustainable and equitable future, this work performs a 'water accounting plus' methodology employing readily available remotely sensed satellite-based data coupled with available measurements.  A variety of methods described herein were used to detect irrigated crops and produce maps showing the distribution throughout the basin. The framework also focuses on the classification of land use categories and the processes by which water is depleted over all land use classes that contributes to separate the beneficial from non-beneficial usage of water. The analysis was started prior to the 2011 start of the Syrian war in order to study the initial distribution of land use classes as well as the water depletion processes before any change in the basin. It shows that more than half of the exploitable water is not consumed within the basin and depleted outside. In contrast, most of the water consumed within the basin is wasted and depleted in a non-beneficial way. Roughly 35% of the cultivated area shown to be irrigated through withdrawals which exceed the capacity of the source. This result reflects the high abstraction rates from groundwater via a large number of unlicensed wells mostly located at the Syrian side. This study also detect a deficiency in the water balance of the Yarmouk River. The findings are relevant to sustainable management not only for water-dependent sectors but also for geopolitical stability among the riparian countries. In this way, open- access remote sensing derived data can provide useful information about the status of water resources especially when ground measurements are poor or absent.

 

Keywords: Yarmouk, Water Accounting Plus, IWM, Irrigated crops, WAPOR.