Water budget-salt balance model for calculating net water saving considering different non-conventional water resources in agricultural process

Abstract

Iraq is facing a dire water crisis due to the decrease in water quantities flow in Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Due to population growth, several studies estimated the water shortage in 2035 to be 44 Billion Cubic Meter (BCM). Thus, Water Budget-Salt Balance Model (WBSBM) has been developed, applied and examined for the Euphrates River basin to compute the net water saving from Non-Conventional Water Resources (NCWRs). WBSBM includes 4-stages; the first is to identify the required data correspond to the conventional water resources in the study-area. The second stage is demonstrating the water-users activities. Thirdly, develop model through the proposed NCWR projects that reflect the required data. The final stage involves net water saving computation while applying all the NCWR projects simultaneously. The results obtained the optimal potential net water saving amount, which are 6.823 and 6.626 BCM/year in 2025 and 2035, respectively. In conclusion, the proposed WBSBM model has comprehensively examined different scenarios of utilizing NCWRs and has determined the optimal potential the net water saving amounts.

Keywords

• Simulation model
• Water saving
• Non-conventional water resources
• Salt balance
• Water balance