Towards a Decision-Making Approach of Sustainable Water Resources Management Based on Hydrological Modeling: A Case Study in Central Morocco

Water is one of the fundamental resources of economic prosperity, food security, human habitats, and the driver of many global phenomena, such as droughts, floods, contaminated water, disease, poverty, and hunger. Therefore, its deterioration and its inadequate use lead to heavy impacts on environme...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2022-09, Vol.14 (17), p.10848
Main Authors: Alitane, Abdennabi, Essahlaoui, Ali, Van Griensven, Ann, Yimer, Estifanos Addisu, Essahlaoui, Narjisse, Mohajane, Meriame, Chawanda, Celray James, Van Rompaey, Anton
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural land
Analysis
Annual precipitation
Aquatic resources
Atmosphere
Calibration
Case studies
Climate change
Crops
Decision making
Drought
Evapotranspiration
Food security
Groundwater recharge
Hunger
Hydrologic cycle
Hydrologic models
Hydrology
Irrigation
Land use planning
Management
Methods
Modelling
Morocco
Natural resources
Poverty
Precipitation
Rain
Remote sensing
Runoff
Simulation
Soil contamination
Soil water
Stream discharge
Stream flow
Surface runoff
Sustainable development
Topography
Water
Water balance
Water balance (Hydrology)
Water management
Water pollution
Water resources
Water resources management
Watersheds
Zooming
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Summary:Water is one of the fundamental resources of economic prosperity, food security, human habitats, and the driver of many global phenomena, such as droughts, floods, contaminated water, disease, poverty, and hunger. Therefore, its deterioration and its inadequate use lead to heavy impacts on environmental resources and humans. Thus, we argue that to address these challenges, one can rely on hydrological management strategies. The objective of this study is to simulate and quantify water balance components based on a hydrologic model with available data at the R’Dom watershed in Morocco. For this purpose, the hydrologic model used is the Soil and Water Assessment Tool + (SWAT+) model. The streamflow model simulations were run at the monthly time step (from 2002 to 2016), during the calibration period 2002–2009, the coefficient of determination (R2) and Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) values were 0.84 and 0.70, respectively, and 0.81 and 0.65, respectively, during the validation period 2010–2016. The results of the water balance modeling in the watershed during the validation period revealed that the average annual precipitation was about 484 mm, and out of this, 5.75 mm came from the development of irrigation in agricultural lands. The evapotranspiration accounted for about 72.28% of the input water of the watershed, while surface runoff (surq_gen) accounted for 12.04%, 11.90% was lost by lateral flow (latq), and 4.14% was lost by groundwater recharge (perco). Our approach is designed to capture a real image of a case study; zooming into other case studies with similar environments to uncover the situation of water resources is highly recommended. Moreover, the outcomes of this study will be helpful for policy and decision-makers, and it can be a good path for researchers for further directions based on the SWAT model to simulate water balance to achieve adequate management of water resources.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su141710848