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Present and future groundwater depletion rates in Wadi Zabid, Tihama Coastal Plain, Yemen

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Abstract

This paper presents a simple water budget model that can be used to quantify present and to predict future groundwater depletion rates in areas where there is a lack of the comprehensive long-term data needed to develop sophisticated numerical groundwater models. This study applied the water budget model in Wadi Zabid, Yemen, a region where groundwater withdrawals have far exceeded replenishment rates for 50 years, resulting in falling groundwater levels. The findings indicate that the present groundwater use in the wadi is unsustainable, mainly due to the expansion of agricultural lands. The current average groundwater depletion rate was calculated as − 0.93 m/yr, which is in line with the observed average of − 1.11 m/yr (1972–2016). Scenario analysis shows that reducing the groundwater depletion rate by two-thirds of the current rate (from 0.93 to 0.32 m/yr) would require a one-third reduction in agricultural lands (from 435 to 305 km2) in the study region, combined with a one-third increase in surface water inflow from upstream (from 132 to 172 mm/yr, also necessitating a reduction of agriculture in the upstream region). Economic incentives to support alternative livelihoods with lower water requirements, alongside utilization of non-conventional water sources (e.g., exploring the feasibility of seawater desalination) could reduce groundwater depletion. The simple water budget approach proved to be a useful means for this type of analysis in data-scarce regions.

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Data availability

Data collected from governmental institutions (mentioned in the acknowledgement section) for the purpose of this study. It is a part of PhD study at Wageningen University and Research, and it is available on request.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Netherlands Fellowship Programme under the NICHE/YEM/027 project “Strengthening Research Capacity in Yemen’s Water Sector for Policy Formulation, Education and Awareness Raising”, executed by the Water and Environment Center, Sana’a University, in cooperation with MetaMeta Research and Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands. We thank the Tihama Development Authority and the National Water Resources Authority for providing well inventories, rainfall and runoff data and access to previous studies. The first author thanks George Bier of the Soil Physics and Land Management Group, Wageningen UR, for support in early-stage data preparation and in exploring possible approaches to groundwater modelling.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Wahib Al-Qubatee, Henk Ritzema & Petra Hellegers

  2. Water and Environment Center, Sana’a University, Sana’a, Yemen

    Wahib Al-Qubatee

  3. Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Henny A. J. Van Lanen

  4. Faculty of Marine Science and Environment, Hodeidah University, Hodeidah, Yemen

    Ghunaim Nasher

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  1. Wahib Al-Qubatee
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Contributions

WAQ (Former PhD Fellow at Wageningen University and Research, graduated in June 2021) conception and design of the manuscript, carried out the field visit and data acquisition, data analysis and interpretation, wrote the manuscript with a contribution from HvL. HvL, GN and HR supervised the overall research and did critical revisions and provided suggestions for improvement of the content of the whole paper. PJGJH was responsible of the overall supervision of the research and provided critical revisions and suggestions for improvement of the content of the paper.

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Correspondence to Wahib Al-Qubatee.

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Fig. 8
figure 8

Rainfall distribution in the study area obtained using spline interpolation for A wet, B mean and C dry years with rain gauge data obtained from eleven stations (five located outside the study region, see Fig. 1) having 23 years of common rainfall records (1978–2000)

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Al-Qubatee, W., Van Lanen, H.A.J., Nasher, G. et al. Present and future groundwater depletion rates in Wadi Zabid, Tihama Coastal Plain, Yemen. Environ Dev Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-04212-x

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