WADIS-MAR - Water harvesting and Agricultural techniques in Dry lands: an

Integrated and Sustainable model in MAghreb Regions.

Giorgio Ghiglieri1-2, Gabriela Afrasinei1, Claudio Arras1, Mohamedou Oulb Baba Sy7, Manuela Barbieri4, Oumelkheir Belkheiri2, Mongi Ben Zaied6, Cristina Buttau1, Alberto Carletti2, Abdelkader Dodo7, Giuseppe Enne2, Antonio Funedda1, Ileana Ioccola2-3, Luigi Ledda2, Roberta Lobina2, Elhadj Meftah5, Maria Teresa Melis1, Abdelouhab Messaudane5, Kamel Nagaz6, Arezki Ouldamara5, Mohamed Ouessar6, Daniele Pittalis2-3, Pier Paolo Roggero2, Mouski Said 5, Mongi Sghaier6, Albert Soler i Gil4, Rachid Taibi5, Clara Torrentó4, Salvatore Virdis2, Chiara Zanolla2 , Houcine Yahyaoui6, Abderezak Zahrouna5 1

Department of Chemical and Geological Sciences, University of Cagliari, Via Trentino 51 - 09127 Cagliari, Italy (ghiglieri@unica.it) 2

Desertification Research Center – NRD, University of Sassari, Viale Italia 39 - 07100 Sassari, Italy (nrd@uniss.it) 3

InTReGA S.r.l., ENEA Spin-off, Piazza S. Ruiu 2, 07100 Sassari, Italy (info@intrega.it) 4

Departament de Cristallografia, Mineralogia i Dipòsits Minerals Facultat de Geologia, c/ Martí i Franquès s/n - 08028 Barcelona, Spain (albertsolergil@ub.edu) 5

Agence Nationale des Ressources Hydrauliques – ANRH, 40 Avenue Mohammedi, Bir Mourad Rais – Alger , Algeria (anrh@anrh.dz ) 6

Institutes des Région Arides - IRA , Route du Djorf Km 22.5 Médenine, Tunisie (Ouessar.Mohamed@ira.rnrt.tn) 7

Observatoire du Sahara et du Sahel – OSS, Boulevard du Leader Yasser Arafat BP 31 Tunis Carthage 1080 Tunisie (lamine.babasy@oss.org.tn) (*)Corresponding author E-mail: ghiglieri@unica.it Abstract: North Africa arid land of Maghreb, suffer scarce water conditions. Erratic behavior of rainfall events over brief intervals often produce short and intense floods events which converge into ephemeral wadi beds. Most part of the available superficial waters is thus lost, providing scarce benefits for households living in villages of such semi-desert areas. WADIS-MAR is one of the five Demonstration Projects implemented in the framework of the Regional Programme “Sustainable Water Integrated Management (SWIM)” that is funded by the European Commission and aims to contribute to the effective implementation and extensive dissemination of sustainable water management policies and practices in the Southern Mediterranean Region. The Programme has been designed in the context of increasing water scarcity, combined pressures on water resources from a wide range of users, desertification processes and climate change impacts. WADIS-MAR Project (2012-2014) concerns the realization of an integrated water harvesting and artificial aquifer recharge techniques in two watersheds in Maghreb Region: Oued Biskra in Algeria and wadi Oum Zessar in Tunisia. These areas are characterized by water scarcity, overexploitation of groundwater resources and highly exposed to climate change risk and desertification processes. The WADIS-MAR Project, taking into account past local traditional experiences, will implement a sustainable water and agriculture management system based on participative and bottom-up approach to enable local communities to manage groundwater resources, starting from a more efficient water harvesting techniques (WHT) and a sustainable agricultural practices application.In this work are reported the main first year activities and results achieved.

Key words: Artificial aquifer recharge, Water Harvesting, Best Agricultural Practices, Desertification, Maghreb Regions

1. INTRODUCTION

Integrated (Sustainable) Water Resources Management (IWRM) is a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximize economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems and the environment. IWRM strategies are based on the four Dublin Principles presented at the World Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Soil and water resources of arid and semi-arid regions are limited. Particularly, surface water supplies are normally critically unreliable, poorly distributed and subject to high evaporation losses. Despite or because of these problems, the optimum course of action for sustainable water resources management in arid and semi-arid areas will, in most case, be a combination of surface and groundwater use, with a range of storage options (Cosgrove and Rijsberman, 2000).

Reliable water resources data are a prerequisite for rational development, though these are generally sparse in arid and semi-arid regions (Simmers, 2003). On a smaller scale, generally, water harvesting techniques might catch water during rainfall events in order to recharge an aquifer, thus impeding the

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quick runoff out of a catchment area. This is particularly important for people living in semi- arid regions characterized by erratic rainfall and prolonged periods of drought, where every drop of water counts. In such regions surface and sub-surface flows are intermittent and some form of storage is essential (i.e. contour terracing, graded and field bounding, strip cropping, check dams, ponds, micro-dams, etc). An alternative or supplementary activity to water harvesting is the artificial aquifer recharge. This technique is a process of induced groundwater replenishment (Murray and Harris, 2010; De Vries and Simmers, 2002; Ghiglieri, 1994).

The successful operation of an artificial recharge facility depends largely on an effective management strategy and on the availability of sufficiently skilled staff to carry out the necessary tasks.

Among several technical aspects, before developing an artificial recharge facility, the viability and feasibility of the project should be assessed to verify that: (i) artificially recharged water does not cause geochemical reactions to occur in the subsurface that adversely impact aquifer water quality; (ii) water quality analyses of the possible sources of water for artificial recharge and water currently present in the aquifer to be recharged must be obtained; (iii) adequate permeability, thickness, and lateral extent occur to achieve the desired performance standards for the artificial recharge facility.

The project “Water harvesting and Agricultural techniques in Dry lands: an Integrated and Sustainable model in MAghreb Regions”(WADIS-MAR) (www.wadis-mar.eu) is one of the five Demonstration Projects implemented in the framework of the Sustainable Water Integrated Management (SWIM) Regional Programme (www.swim-sm.eu), and has been funded by the European Commission.

WADIS-MAR is implemented in Algeria and Tunisia with the objective to contribute to improve the living conditions of rural populations in arid and semi-arid target areas of the Maghreb region, which are actually suffering under scarce water conditions and of bad water quality. Within selected target areas erratic behaviour of rainfall events over brief intervals often produce short and intense floods events, which converge into ephemeral wadi beds. Most part of the available superficial waters is thus lost, providing scarce benefits for households living in surrounding areas.

The project aims to contribute to an integrated, sustainable water harvesting, artificial aquifer recharge and sustainable agriculture management in the watersheds of Oued Biskra, in Algeria, and Wadi Oum Zessar, in Tunisia (Fig. 1).

In particular WADIS-MAR aims at leading to the:

improvement of traditional water harvesting systems (i.e. jessour and tabias) by applying “soft” modern rehabilitation interventions;

increasing groundwater availability through artificial aquifer recharge and promoting the use of modern techniques (i.e. gabions, recharge wells, infiltration basins);

managing flood flow, run-off and hence reduce erosion;

enhancing water quality by reducing pollution caused by non-use of agricultural best practices;

promoting water efficient farming systems and the use of more stress-tolerant crops. WADIS-MAR will, thus, take into account past local traditional experiences (Fig. 2 and 3) and will

implement a sustainable water and agriculture management system based on participative and bottom-up approach. For both target areas, expected results concern the implementation of: (i) a sustainable Integrated Water and Agricultural Management (IWAM) System; (ii) best-agricultural practices and rational irrigation techniques; (iii) actions to improve capacity and awareness of local and national institutions.

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Fig. 1. WADIS-MAR intervention areas of oued Biskra (a) and wadi Oum Zessar (b). With red triangles, the location of surveyed wells are reported. For the intervention site of wadi Oum Zessar the watershed boundary is also reported in

red. (Ref. Syst.: UTMWGS84 zone 31 and 32 respectively for Algeria and Tunisia sites).

Fig.2: Traditional water harvesting systems (Tunisia) : a) Jessour; b) Tabia; c) Spate irrigation

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Fig.3: a - b) Traditional agricultural system with olives trees in Tunisia and Palm grove in Algeria; c) wadi bed rectification (Algeria).

The project is implemented by

Desertification Research Centre (NRD), University of Sassari, Italy;

Departament de Cristallografia, Mineralogia i Dipòsits Minerals, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain;

Observatoire du Sahara et du Sahel (OSS), Tunis Carthage, Tunisie;

Institutes des Région Arides (IRA), Médenine, Tunisie;

Agence Nationale des Ressources Hydrauliques (ANRH), Alger, Algerie. The time span of the Project is three years from December 2011 to December 2014.

2. PROJECT ACTIVITIES

The main activities of WADIS-MAR are: (i) Project Management and coordination; (ii) Integrated Water and Agricultural Management (IWAM) System design; (iii) IWAM System construction; (iv) Performance assessment and maintenance phase; (v) Awareness raising and capacity building; (vi) Dissemination. In this framework, the activities carried out so far are here reported.

2.1 Existing data collection and geodatabase realization

This activity represents a continuous process of data collection and quality control which has been implemented using existing data provided by partners and experts, in Algeria and Tunisia. Topographic and thematic maps at different scales and formats were georeferenced using local cartographic reference systems (CRS) and then transformed into international CRS. The quality of this task has been assessed through several field based GPS measurements in both areas.

A selection of relevant geodata collected during the inception phase of the project has been organized into a personal geodatabase. Processed data and metadata, literature references, technical reports and other documents, have been loaded within a project web-based sharing systems and are actually accessible by project partners.

2.2 Geological and hydrogeological setting

A multidisciplinary research effort, including geological, hydrogeological, hydro-chemical, geophysical and hydrological investigations, was aimed at selecting suitable zones for the artificial aquifer recharge in

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both target areas. The following sub activities have been carried out: (i) water sampling protocol; (ii) field data survey; (iii) water chemical and isotopic analysis, (iv) 3D hydrogeological modelling.

To standardize samples collection, their preservation and to facilitate results interpretation, a sampling protocol for collection of water samples for chemical and isotopic analyses has been built. This protocol has been shared among project partners.

Exploratory hydrogeological missions in Algeria and Tunisia have been carried out during the first months of project implementation. During these missions a preliminary field-based water quality measurements were performed and hydrogeological/hydrochemical issues identified: i.e. occurrence of soils and water salinization problems, occurrence of high rates of sulphates in groundwater, high water temperatures, high rates of water withdrawal rates for public water supply. First surveys allowed to create a network of 51 and 60 wells respectively in Algeria and Tunisia. For each well coordinates, piezometric level, water use, pH, dissolved oxygen, red-ox, temperature and electric conductivity were collected in-situ, together with observations about conservation state, construction characteristics and user’s information.

Both in Algeria and Tunisia hydro-chemical and isotopic survey have been carried out in selected relevant wells (Fig. 1) and according to project survey protocol. So far, only the isotopic analysis of Algerian data were completed and first results analyzed. Preliminary results coupled to chemical data has allowed evidencing the existence of a source of contamination near the town of Biskra probably related with fertilizers or wastewater. A new field survey enlarging sampling area has been already performed in Algeria and third one planned to better characterize groundwater recharge and to assess the occurrence of natural attenuation processes of pollutants.

Furthermore a methodology aiming at reconstruction of geological and hydrogeological setting was developed through the following steps: (i) bibliographic research; (ii) digital terrain modeling (DTM) analysis and watershed boundaries reconstruction; (iii) design and population of a specific geological database with collected stratigraphic logs; (iv) 3D reconstruction of main aquifers geometry.

2.3 Agronomic and climatic characterization

Agronomic activities of the project are conducted in main zones which were selected to represent the major agro-systems.

In Tunisia, following several field based recognition and taking into account past experience of local partner, potential sites for agronomic field intervention have been identified: (i) Bedoui (irrigation of annual crops), Oued Moussa (water harvesting for rainfed agriculture) in downstream area; (ii) Allamet-Mgerine (irrigation of fruit trees) and Rouiss (water harvesting for rainfed agriculture) along the middlestream area; (iii) Ksar Hallouf (traditional mountain oasis) and Bhayra (water harvesting for rainfed agriculture) along the upstream area; (iv) Plateau of Dhahar – Lathmane (water harvesting for rainfed agriculture) in the plateau area.

The preliminary agronomic characterization in Algeria was based on document provided by partners and public institution which have been involved in a synergistic manner for a more effective project implementation. Following a first meeting with local stakeholders a preliminary intervention plan has been defined. Main action to be performed and later on extended to farmer were hypnotized: sub-irrigation techniques setting; definition of a relationship between extreme events and physiological behaviour of plants; soil salinity evolution study, setting up of fertigation test and extension to agriculturists; soil humidity tests.

A collection of available climatic data was carried out both for the Algerian and Tunisian intervention areas within international and local data repositories. The purpose was to better define climatic characteristic of sites (particularly concerning rain dynamics, intensity and water availability) and to calculate reference and crop evapotranspiration for irrigation scheduling and management. Based on existing knowledge, a selection of possible new climatic station sites has been made.

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2.4 Public Participatory GIS (PPGIS)

To date this activity is started only in Tunisia. The participatory procedure in Oum Zessar watershed was carried out using synergies with the FP7 AFROMAISON project and can be split in two different steps.

Several field visits and single-day workshops were carried out. To facilitate multi-stakeholders learning process in biophysical ad socio-economic impact of water and soil conservation practices, project team experts made use of geospatial tools such as GIS, orto-photo, satellite imagery and Google maps. Three potential micro-catchments were selected in three different areas of Oum Zessar watershed: (i) Chaabet El Anaz site (up-stream); (ii) Loudayette site (mid-stream); (iii) Oued Moussa site (down-stream).

The second step consisted of 3 workshops (one for each micro-catchment) in which stakeholders (farmers, representatives of local authorities, researchers or development professionals, representative of civil society, NGOs and scientists) were involved to better define: (i) biophysical and socio-economic characterization of the micro-catchment; (ii) beneficiary farmers; (iii) a georeferenced action plan matrix for each site with WHTs to implement.

2.4 Dissemination

Visibility of the EC contribution has been regularly ensured during the meetings, training sessions, conferences organised with local and international stakeholders and project website (www.wadismar.eu). Visibility materials (leaflets, brochure, posters, pens and video) have been produced and distributed at local and international level. Thanks to the existing relations between partners and many scientific and governmental Institutions, the project ensured at international level appropriate visibility of the actions undertaken. Finally, strong visibility to the project has been given by national Algerian and Tunisian press and Tunisian television during the organisation of the Launching events in both countries in 2012.

In 2012 and 2013 project partners actively participated to the following events:

Meeting “In attesa di Rio+20: il contesto internazionale e lo sviluppo di strategie nazionali e regionali di lotta alla desertificazione (UNCCD - World Day to Combat Desertification”, June 18th 2012, Sassari, Italy;

Workshop “Information workshop for media on the Regional Programme: Sustainable Integrated Water Resources Management (SWIM)”, June 18th 2012, Tunis, Tunisia;

"SIWI Middle East Seminar: Transboundary Water Planning in the Lower Jordan River Basin”, September 10th 2012, Amman, Jordan;

Conference "First Global Soil Week – Soil for life", organized in the framework of the Global Soil Partnership, November 18th - 22nd 2012, Berlin, Germany;

Conference "Water: A geo-resource to protect and valorise", 15th March 2013, Cagliari, Italy.

3. WADIS-MAR ACHIVIED RESULTS IN 2012-2013

To date the following results and outputs have been achieved:

Several guidelines prepared and shared with all partners;

Groundwater sampling handbook;

Thematic maps georeferenced and collected data homogenized/structured within a GeoDB;

Hydrogeological characterization (including geological and hydrogeological 3D model) of the intervention site in Algeria (Fig. 4);

List of the potential intervention sites define for agricultural activities implementation in Tunisia (including definition of agronomic protocols, best agricultural practices and irrigation techniques);

PPGIS action plan matrix;

Preliminary design of artificial aquifer recharge system;

Preliminary selection and design of best site for the IWAM system (Fig. 4).

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Fig.4: a – b) 3D model surface and volume of the alluvial aquifer of Oued Biskra; c) Design of preliminary artificial recharge system.

CONCLUSIONS

Obtained results constitute the base for the upcoming activities. The whole intervention will be finalized and realized with the aim of WADIS-MAR IWAM construction. The project has important replication potential. The strengthened capacity of regional and national authorities and the enhanced inter-sectorial coordination promoted through the project is creating an enabling technical, policy, legal and institutional environment towards successful Water and Agriculture Management technologies and approaches. The

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best practices, so produced, will eventually benefit other regions in Algeria and Tunisia through the implementation of across-countries activities directed to exchange experiences and lessons learnt. Moreover, through the envisaged dissemination activities, other Mediterranean countries could take advantage from gained experience about the possible solutions to water scarcity and overexploitation in arid and semi-arid areas applied by WADIS-MAR, resulting in the up-scaling and replication of the project’s achievements.

REFERENCES

Cosgrove, W.J., Rijsberman, F.R., 2000. World Water Vision: Making Water Everybody’s Business., Earthscan Publications Ltd., London, 108 pp.

De Vries, J.J., Simmers, I., 2002. Groundwater recharge: an overview of processes and challenges. Hydrogeology Journal, 10(1), 5-17.

Ghiglieri, G., 1994. Sperimentazione di ricarica artificiale negli acquiferi sabbiosi in un sito inquinato da effluenti industriali (Portovesme, Sardegna sud-occidentale). Tesi di Dottorato. Biblioteche Nazionali di Roma e Firenze (Coll.:TDR 1996 00238) – BNI 97-716T (pp1-175).

Murray, R., Harris, J., 2010. Water banking: a practical guide to using artificial groundwater recharge. Strategy and guideline development for national groundwater planning requirements. Department of Water Affairs, Pretoria, South Africa, 24pp.

Simmers, I., 2003. Hydrological processes and water resources management. Understanding water in a dry environment. IAH Book 23. ISBN 9058096181, Balkema Publisher, 341 pp.

WADIS-MAR Project website www.wadismar.eu.