Jordan - Management of Groundwater Resources

Country / Region: Jordan / Middle East
Focal Point: Groundwater

Begin of project: September 1, 2015

End of project: July 31, 2021

Status of project: May 25, 2021

Measurements at groundwater measuring point Source: BGR

Since the 1960s, Jordan’s population has almost decupled from less than one million to close to ten million people today. Over the same period, water usage has largely increased due to economic growth as well as for agricultural irrigation. Today, Jordan is covering its water demand by up to 70 % from groundwater sources, which are largely fossil or have very little recharge rates. Additionally groundwater quality has decreased over the past decades due to overuse, unsustainable use of fertilizers in agriculture as well as improper storage and treatment of waste and wastewater.

The Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) has been active in Jordan on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) since 1959. With a total number of 25 projects over the last 62 years, Jordan is one of the most important cooperation partners for BGR in the world. The focal areas of this long-term cooperation have changed over the past decades. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the cooperation with Jordan aimed at building up the Geological Survey. Later, support was provided in the fields of groundwater exploration, the exploitation of phosphate deposits, the elaboration of a Jordanian water-supply plan, as well as geochemical investigations and surveys on Jordan’s oil shale resources. Since the 1980s, the focus of cooperation shifted to groundwater-related issues, including hydrogeological mapping, the development of groundwater models and support in the field of groundwater protection. In recent years, the focus shifted to monitoring, sustainable management and protection of Jordan’s groundwater resources as well as the validation and publication of data.

Dry well Source: BGR

Completed project: Program - Management of Groundwater Resources (BGR)

The aim of the project “Program - Management of Groundwater Resources (BGR)” was to strengthen the national authorities in their ability to assess the available groundwater resources within the country and to orientate the drinking water supply on a reliable data basis. The project was conducted in the context of a survey of the Jordanian groundwater resources, carried out by the BGR during the 1980s and 1990s. A systematic nationwide interpretation of data has not been undertaken since then.

Improvement of data collection, storage and publication

In the frame of the project, BGR and MWI published the “Groundwater Resources Assessment of Jordan (2017)” . This publication is the first countrywide assessment of groundwater resources in Jordan in the last 20 years and compared the status of Jordan’s groundwater resources in the 1990s with the status in 2017. It provided Jordan’s decision makers with up-to-date hydrogeological information of the country's most important groundwater resources, thus making it possible to consider the critical groundwater situation in water resource and water infrastructure planning processes and decisions.

Additionally the project empowered the MWI to collect, evaluate and publish hydrogeological data on a regular basis. In this regard, the Hydrological Yearbook was published for the first time in 2018 as a collaboration of BGR and MWI. Since then MWI has published the yearbook itself on a yearly basis. Furthermore, the project supports the MWI in the establishment and retention of standards for data quality assurance and storage in its central database and during monitoring.

Water Year Book Jordan, Hydrological Year 2016-2017 Source: MWI

Introduction and improvement of a decision support system (DSS) and coupling with the Groundwater Model

In addition to the need to collect and analyze groundwater data, the project formed part of the Decision Support System (DSS) already introduced in the MWI. The WEAP-DSS is capable to model the water supply system and is well established within MWI for the compilation of the annual water balance from national to local scale. The main steps for the preparation of the balances are well documented and established and a WEAP-DSS working group exists in the MWI. However, the potential of the introduced models was so far not used to its full capacity. In order to improve the results of the WEAP model, the groundwater model and the WEAP model were coupled. Within WEAP, a simple bucket-model is used to evaluate groundwater availability. Hydraulic processes and limitations of groundwater availability due to declining water levels and wells falling dry are normally not considered. To add such information to the WEAP simulation, it was coupled to the groundwater model using the coupling software tool LinkKitchen. The coupling procedure enables the user to easily investigate several scenarios without interfering with the numerical groundwater flow model, since the linkage software assigns all groundwater related boundary conditions in the groundwater model for every time step and several scenarios automatically. Results for all scenarios can be analyzed simultaneously within WEAP. The model-based predictions are now included in the strategic groundwater resources management and will thus support the planning of measures to mitigate adverse developments.

Implementation of wellfield management plans

The pressure on the Jordanian water sector has increased considerably, partly due to the inflow of refugees from neighboring Syria in recent years. Therefore, groundwater resources are over-pumped and wells are continuously deepened or newly drilled. As a result, groundwater levels and water quality are rapidly declining. Groundwater recharge areas that are sensitive to pollution are inadequately mapped and measures for groundwater protection are not well implemented. In order to cope with these challenges, it is necessary to estimate the existing water sources around major well fields to allow an adapted extraction strategy to allow for long-term utilization. In order to strengthen water utilities in the efficient control and distribution of drinking water resources, groundwater management plans were prepared. This allowed engineers and decision makers to adapt to the ever-changing conditions. The risk of over-pumping and salinization of wells are now minimized through a more sophisticated well-field management strategy. This avoids unnecessary costs and ecological damage and helps to allow for an adequate and future oriented water supply.

Introduction of groundwater aspects in land-use planning

In order to include groundwater management and protection aspects in land-use planning a groundwater vulnerability map for central and northern Jordan was developed. With the help of the map, a better protection of groundwater resources against pollution was achieved.

The project “Program – Management of Groundwater Resources (BGR)” was the consolidation of the previously parallel conducted projects “Management of Groundwater Resources” and “Improved Groundwater Resources Management as a Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis” and had a duration of six years from September 2015 to July 2021. The overall German contribution to the project was 7.5 Mio EUR.

Project contributions:

• Improved groundwater management in response to the Syrian refugee crisis
• TC Jordan: Groundwater Resources Management

Literature:

• Water Yearbook 2016-2017
• Groundwater Resource Assessment
• Groundwater Vulnerability Map of the Ajloun and Balqa Group Aquifers 1:650,000 (PDF, 54 MB)
• Factsheet: Short-term support for Covid-19 adaption measures in Jordan. Assessment of groundwater extraction efficiency to cope with increased water demand (PDF, 1 MB)

Partner:

Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI)