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Numerical analysis of the groundwater regime in the western Dead Sea escarpment, Israel + West Bank

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Abstract

Water is scarce in the semi-arid to arid regions around the Dead Sea, where water supply mostly relies on restricted groundwater resources. Due to increasing population in this region, the regional aquifer system is exposed to additional stress. This results in the continuous decrease in water level of the adjacent Dead Sea. The interaction of an increasing demand for water due to population growth and the decrease of groundwater resources will intensify in the near future. Thus, the water supply situation could worsen significantly unless sustainable water resource management is conducted. In this study, we develop a regional groundwater flow model of the eastern and southern Judea Group Aquifer to investigate the groundwater regime in the western Dead Sea drainage basin of Israel and the West Bank. An extensive geological database was developed and consequently a high-resolution structural model was derived. This structural model was the basis for various groundwater flow scenarios. The objective was to capture the spatial heterogeneity of the aquifer system and to apply these results to the southern part of the study area, which has not been studied in detail until now. As a result we analyzed quantitatively the flow regime, the groundwater mass balance and the hydraulic characteristics (hydraulic conductivity and hydraulic head) of the cretaceous aquifer system and calibrated them with PEST. The calibrated groundwater flow model can be used for integrated groundwater water management purposes in the Dead Sea area, especially within the framework of the SUMAR-Project.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Mr. Guttman (Mekorot) for their kind cooperation, discussions and suggestions during the study. The authors thank the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for funding the SUMAR-Project (grant code: 02WM0848). Moreover, Helmholtz Impulse and Networking Fund through Helmholtz Interdisciplinary Graduate School for Environmental Research (HIGRADE) supported this work (Bissinger and Kolditz 2008). We appreciate the helpful comments of the anonymous reviewer that improved the manuscript significantly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Catchment Hydrology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ, 06120, Halle, Saale, Germany

    Agnes Gräbe, Tino Rödiger & Christian Siebert

  2. Department of Environmental Informatics, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ, 04318, Leipzig, Germany

    Karsten Rink, Thomas Fischer, Feng Sun, Wenqing Wang & Olaf Kolditz

  3. TU Dresden, Applied Environmental System Analysis, 01062, Dresden, Germany

    Agnes Gräbe & Olaf Kolditz

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  1. Agnes Gräbe
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  2. Tino Rödiger
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  3. Karsten Rink
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  4. Thomas Fischer
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  5. Feng Sun
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  7. Christian Siebert
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  8. Olaf Kolditz
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Correspondence to Agnes Gräbe.

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Gräbe, A., Rödiger, T., Rink, K. et al. Numerical analysis of the groundwater regime in the western Dead Sea escarpment, Israel + West Bank. Environ Earth Sci 69, 571–585 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-012-1795-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-012-1795-8

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