Water Balance of the Souss Basin
Francisco Olivera, Philippe Pallas and Mohamed Rachid in the
Souss Basin
The Water Balance of the Souss Basin is a technical cooperation project
undertaken by the Direction Generale de l'Hydraulique (DGH) in Rabat, Morocco,
and the Center for Research in Water Resources (CRWR) of the University
of Texas at Austin, with financial support and technical direction from
the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Italy.
The main project activity involves exchanges of visits between professionals
of the DGH and CRWR.
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In July 1995, David Maidment from CRWR spent two days in Rabat at DGH accompanied
by Philippe Pallas of FAO to refine the objectives and scope of the project
with Mohammed Jellali, the Director-General of DGH.
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In October, 1995, Francisco Olivera from CRWR spent two weeks in Rabat
working with Mohamed Rachid of DGH doing a grid based analysis of surface
terrain, precipitation and surface runoff in the Souss Basin. (See First
Water Balance Report)
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In June, 1996, Ye Zichuan from CRWR spent two weeks at DGH working with
Mohamed Rachid and Jaouad Filali on MODFLOW modeling of the groundwater
system and on Avenue based surface and groundwater balancing.
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In August, 1996, Mohamed Rachid and Jaouad Filali are spending one month
at CRWR in Austin to improve and integrate the surface and groundwater
models using both Grid-based and Arcview-based techniques.
DGH is the principal water planning agency of Morocco and is responsible
for assessment of water resources availability and plans for new water
resource development projects in the country. GIS is used by DGH to prepare
and store spatial data in digital form, to prepare maps for data presentation,
and to prepare input data for hydrologic models.
The purpose of the project is to improve the utilization of GIS
in DGH's water planning efforts by focussing on the water issues of the
Souss Basin, a 20,000 sq. km. watershed in the South of Morocco whose main
river flows into the Atlantic Ocean at Agadir. The basin has a central
valley overlying an alluvial aquifer which supplies water for irrigated
agriculture. Overpumping of this aquifer is resulting in groundwater depletion.
Aquifer recharge projects to augment groundwater depletion are needed.
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Maidment's home page
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