Enhancing the Sustainability of Water Resources in the Arid Region of Jordan

Abstract

This article uses tree-ring reconstructed precipitation, began in 1743, to characterize consistent dry and wet periods for further enhancements to the existed water resources in the arid region of Jordan. With the exemption of the 1958 – 1963 dry period, the analysis of the historical precipitation (1940 – 2010) showed the occurrence of short dry and wet events ranging between 1 – 4 years, mostly 1 – 2 years. On other hand, the analysis of the 239 years of reconstructed precipitation succeeded to capture the occurrence of several long dry and wet events, i.e. the 6-year dry event (1785 – 1763), of 391mm total precipitation deficit, and the 7-year wet event (1817 – 1823) of 551mm total precipitation surplus that is 120% greater than the magnitude of the historical greatest wet period (454mm). Furthermore, this article presents generic theoretical models to compute the return period and the expected number of any dry or wet event that may emerge during the operation life of the surface water resource. Using the models, the obtained theoretical results were compared with analytical results attained from the analysis of the historical and reconstructed precipitation. The proposed models successfully modeled the historical dry and wet events in Madaba region, therefore can be used in water resources studies.

Keywords

• arid region
• Jordan precipitation
• water resources
• wet period estimation