Title: Spatio-temporal analysis of groundwater level in an arid area

Authors: Abbas Alipour; Seyedmostafa Hashemi; Sajad Bagheri Said Shokri; Mojtaba Moravej

Addresses: Political Geography Department, Imam Hossein University, Tehran, Iran ' Political Geography, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran ' School of Geology, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran ' National Elite Foundation, No. 209, between Navab Str and Roudaki Str. Azadi Str., Tehran, Iran

Abstract: Sustainable management of precious groundwater resources is vital to growth, especially in arid areas which they heavily depend on. In this study, monthly groundwater level time series of 322 observation wells in Sistan and Balouchestan province of Iran in the period 2002 to 2012 were used as a measure of sustainable development. Results show that 95.6% of areas of the province aquifers are non-stationary. In addition, 5.5%, 13.7% and 80.8% of studied wells show no increasing and decreasing trend at 5% significance level. Spatial analysis reveals that the groundwater levels of 7.3%, 11.3% and 81.6% area of groundwater resources have increased, sustained or decreased, respectively. According to calculated slope of trends, the province has experienced −69.72 (MCM) decline in groundwater resources per year in past ten years. It means that sustainable development criteria were totally neglected. Increasing in water use efficiency in the agriculture sector by 6% and of water reuse by 78% will solve the issue.

Keywords: ADF test; aquifer; groundwater level; Şen innovative trend analysis method; sustainable development; Sistan and Balouchestan; stationary tests; water efficiency; water reuse.

DOI: 10.1504/IJW.2018.090185

International Journal of Water, 2018 Vol.12 No.1, pp.66 - 81

Received: 05 Aug 2016
Accepted: 26 Dec 2016
Published online: 05 Mar 2018 *

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