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.
- 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.
- 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)
- 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.
- 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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