Suitability of arid land rehabilitation technologies: simulation of water harvesting based solutions in Middle Eastern agro-pastures

Abstract

The enhancement of Middle Eastern agro-pastures’ productivity through water harvesting originates from ancient technologies and indigenous knowledge. More recently, integrated watershed rehabilitation practices, such as the combination of mechanized micro water harvesting for forage shrub production in upstream areas, and flood water harvesting based cereal agriculture in the downstream, have been successfully tested at local level in Jordan. However, the erratic nature of rainfall, exacerbated by climate change, and the ongoing degradation and depletion of the fragile dryland-ecosystems create a complex environment for out-scaling of proven technologies. A hydrological assessment campaign, conducted in Jordan, aims at establishing new linkages between plot and field scale soil, water and vegetation processes and global hydrological modeling. The aim is to bridge scales and to unlock the potential of globally harmonized information available. The research tests the out-scalability of water harvesting based measures, applied locally, through intense on-site investigation of soil, water and vegetation dynamics, merged with large scale hydrological modeling for out-scaling suitability and ex ante impact assessment. The concept is based on a likelihood approach integrating several environmental layers, such as top-soil, terrain and vegetation cover with surface hydrological modeling using global datasets. The goal is to investigate spatio-temporal surface water availability - as the driver of water harvesting based rehabilitation and productivity enhancement measures. The test-phase is ongoing for further data assimilation and process verification. Evaluated results will be initially presented at the 3rd Conference of the Arabian Journal of Geosciences (CAJG) in Tunisia, November 2020.