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Overexploitation and continuous drought effects on groundwater yield and marine intrusion: considerations arising from the modelling of Mamora coastal aquifer, Morocco
Author(s) -
Ben Kabbour Brahim,
Zouhri Lahcen,
Mania Jacky
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
hydrological processes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.222
H-Index - 161
eISSN - 1099-1085
pISSN - 0885-6087
DOI - 10.1002/hyp.5631
Subject(s) - aquifer , groundwater , water table , saltwater intrusion , hydrology (agriculture) , seawater intrusion , submarine groundwater discharge , overexploitation , environmental science , groundwater discharge , geology , groundwater recharge , fishery , geotechnical engineering , biology
This paper studies the effect of drought and pumping discharge on groundwater supplies and marine intrusion. The investigation concerns the Mamora coastal aquifer, northwest of Morocco. A large‐scale groundwater model was established to model (a) the amount of freshwater discharge towards the ocean and the sea water volumes flowing inland as a consequence of the inverse hydraulic gradient, (b) the impact of drought and pumping discharge on the water table level and, as a consequence, on marine water intrusion. In fact, the simulated submarine groundwater discharge (SGWD) would decrease from 864 m 3 /d/km in 1987 to 425 m 3 /d/km in 2000. The simulated volumes of sea water intruding the aquifer as a result of inverse hydraulic gradient would increase from 0·25 Mm 3 /y in 1987 to 0·3 Mm 3 /y in 2000. As a consequence of a negative rainfall gradient of −5 mm/y, the simulated SGWD would decline to 9 m 3 /d/km and the sea water intrusion (SWI) would increase to 0·35 Mm 3 /y since the year 2010. Due to insufficient data on the trend of pumping discharge, a hypothetical increase of this latter from 38·3 Mm 3 /y to 53·2 Mm 3 /y is simulated to induce an increase of marine water intrusion from 0·25 Mm 3 /y to 0·9 Mm 3 /y. Consequently, to optimally exploit this seemingly fragile coastal aquifer, a plan of future actions to implement is proposed. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.