Papers by Husam Baalousha
Modeling Earth Systems and Environment, 2016
Surface-water bodies and aquifers are normally connected and it is widely recognised they should ... more Surface-water bodies and aquifers are normally connected and it is widely recognised they should be treated as one entity. Numerous studies were done to analyse the effect of groundwater pumping on nearby streams, however, little is known on the differences of effects between surface-water take and a pumping well of equal rate. The question, which often arises by water resources managers and allocation authorities, is whether to allocate or consent-transfer from a surface-water body or from an aquifer. This study explores the different effects of each case and makes a comparison using analytical analysis and numerical models. A hypothetical model is presented where two cases are considered: (1) a stream water take through a diversion and (2) a pumping well. In both cases, the drawdown and water budget of surface and groundwater are presented. Results show the pumping well produces high drawdown in the aquifer, and induces stream leakage. The stream leakage results in stream level drop. It takes a long time for such a system to stabilise or to reach a steady state. In contrary, the direct stream water take produces much lower drawdown in the aquifer, albeit higher drop in stream water level. The latter case stabilises and reaches steady state conditions considerably faster than the first one. These results reveal it is recommended to allocate from surface-water bodies than aquifers as the impact is less and for a shorter time, given the same allocated volume of water.
Water, Apr 2, 2022
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Water
Though forming a fundamental component of the water budget, soil evaporation is challenging to qu... more Though forming a fundamental component of the water budget, soil evaporation is challenging to quantify in practice. Most water balance and soil moisture studies rely on pan evaporation or empirical relations to calculate evaporation, which is later used for water budget estimation. This study is based on the in situ measurement of soil evaporation in arid regions using smart field lysimeters. These lysimeters calculate the actual evaporation and downward leakage within the soil column using changes in weight, in addition to measuring temperature, soil moisture, soil matric potential, and other ancillary parameters in real time. The study analyses 17 months of data collected from two smart-field lysimeters installed in loamy soil within unirrigated land in Qatar. Lysimeter data were validated using a 1D numerical unsaturated flow model using Hydrus, and utilized laboratory testing results of the water retention. The Hydrus model output shows a good match between numerical and lysime...
Water Resources Research
Introduction 1.1. Seawater Intrusion: Modeling Approaches Numerical modeling has become an essent... more Introduction 1.1. Seawater Intrusion: Modeling Approaches Numerical modeling has become an essential and popular tool for investigating seawater intrusion (SWI) in coastal aquifers (CAs; Werner et al., 2013). SWI models are helpful in practical studies for multiple purposes, such as the development of strategies for groundwater management in coastal areas (e.g.,
Water Resources Research, 2022
Introduction 1.1. Seawater Intrusion: Modeling Approaches Numerical modeling has become an essent... more Introduction 1.1. Seawater Intrusion: Modeling Approaches Numerical modeling has become an essential and popular tool for investigating seawater intrusion (SWI) in coastal aquifers (CAs; Werner et al., 2013). SWI models are helpful in practical studies for multiple purposes, such as the development of strategies for groundwater management in coastal areas (e.g.,
Water, 2022
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Water, 2021
In multispecies electrolyte solutions, each individual species can migrate according to its speci... more In multispecies electrolyte solutions, each individual species can migrate according to its specific ionic properties. This process is called electrochemical migration or electro-diffusion and is well-described by the Nernst–Planck equation. The common approach for solving the corresponding mathematical system is based on the null current (NC) assumption, which expresses the electric potential in terms of charges and concentrations of chemical components. This assumption has a great advantage as it eliminates the electric potential from the Nernst–Planck equation. However, the NC assumption has limited capacities in describing electro-diffusion processes when the domain is subjected to an external electric field. The validity of the NC assumption could be questionable, even in the absence of an external electric field. This topic has never been investigated in the past. The main goal of this work is to evaluate the validity of the NC assumption and to understand its effect on the mo...
Journal of Hydrology, 2018
Abstract Statistical calibration of flow and transport models in unsaturated porous media is ofte... more Abstract Statistical calibration of flow and transport models in unsaturated porous media is often carried out with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. However, the practicality of these methods is limited by their computational requirement, particularly when large prior intervals are assigned to the model parameters. In this work, a new operational strategy is investigated to alleviate the computational burden of MCMC samplers using results from a preliminary calibration performed with the First-Order Approximation (FOA) method. With the new strategy, the posterior distribution is approximated using a high-order Polynomial Chaos Expansion (PCE) surrogate model constructed over reduced parameter ranges. The latter are obtained from the 99.9 FOA confidence intervals. Two challenging test cases are investigated to assess efficiency and accuracy of the new strategy. The first test case considers estimation of flow and pesticide transport parameters from a synthetic infiltration experiment. The second test case deals with the assessment of unsaturated hydraulic soil parameters from a real-word laboratory drainage experiment. The results of the proposed strategy are compared to those of FOA, of the standard MCMC method and of an improved MCMC method in which the sampler is preconditioned with draws from the FOA posterior distribution. For both test cases, the new strategy provides accurate mean estimated parameter values and uncertainty regions and is much more efficient than the other MCMC methods. It is up to 50 times more efficient than the standard MCMC method.
Modeling Earth Systems and Environment, 2018
Water, Air, & Soil Pollution, 2018
The goal of this study is to introduce an adaptation of the Eulerian-Lagrangian localized adjoint... more The goal of this study is to introduce an adaptation of the Eulerian-Lagrangian localized adjoint method (ELLAM) for the simulation of mass transport in fractured porous media, and to evaluate the performance of ELLAM in such a case. The fractures are represented explicitly using the discrete fracture model. The velocity field was calculated using the mixed hybrid finite element method. A sound ELLAM implementation is developed to address numerical artifacts (spurious oscillations and numerical dispersion) arising from the presence of fractures. The efficiency of the developed ELLAM implementation was further improved by taking advantage of the parallel computing on shared memory architecture for the tasks related to particles tracking and linear system resolving. The performance of ELLAM was tested by comparing its results with the Eulerian discontinuous Galerkin method based on several benchmark problems dealing with different fracture configurations. The results highlight the robustness and accuracy of ELLAM, as it allows the use of large time steps, and overcomes the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) restriction. The outcome also shows that ELLAM is more efficient when fracture density is increased.
Arabian Journal of Geosciences, 2017
Qatar is an arid country with limited water resources due to the low amount of rainfall it receiv... more Qatar is an arid country with limited water resources due to the low amount of rainfall it receives. With no surface water and an average annual rainfall of 80 mm per year, Qatar relies upon desalination to meet the increasing domestic water demand. The average annual rainfall recharge is around 60 million m3, whereas the total groundwater abstraction is 250 million m3 per year. As a result, groundwater level drops dramatically, thereby inducing brackish water upconing and saline water intrusion. Desalination provides 99% of domestic water demand, which increases continuously as a result of the influx of migrants into the country. The current capacity of desalination plants in Qatar is around 540 million m3 per year. Around 30% of this volume is being lost as a result of leakage in the water system network, and the rest is used for domestic purposes. This paper discusses three different scenarios of water demand until the year 2040. The results of these scenarios show water demand will vary between 516 and 2718 million m3 in the year 2040, depending upon the various trends in population growth, and assuming the current per capita of 500 l/day. The results of this study highlight the need for water rationing and conservation and may help the planners of future water demand.
Environmental Earth Sciences, 2017
Modeling Earth Systems and Environment, 2016
Modeling Earth Systems and Environment, 2016
Journal of African Earth Sciences, 2016
Abstract Qatar is one of the most arid countries in the world with limited water resources. With ... more Abstract Qatar is one of the most arid countries in the world with limited water resources. With little rainfall and no surface water, groundwater is the only natural source of fresh water in the country. Whilst the country relies mainly on desalination of seawater to secure water supply, groundwater has extensively been used for irrigation over the last three decades, which caused adverse environmental impact. Vulnerability assessment is a widely used tool for groundwater protection and land-use management. Aquifers in Qatar are carbonate with lots of fractures, depressions and cavities. Karst aquifers are generally more vulnerable to contamination than other aquifers as any anthropogenic-sourced contaminant, especially above a highly fractured zone, can infiltrate quickly into the aquifer and spread over a wide area. The vulnerability assessment method presented in this study is based on two approaches: DRASTIC and EPIK, within the framework of Geographical Information System (GIS). Results of this study show that DRASTIC vulnerability method suits Qatar hydrogeological settings more than EPIK. The produced vulnerability map using DRASTIC shows coastal and karst areas have the highest vulnerability class. The southern part of the country is located in the low vulnerability class due to occurrence of shale formation within aquifer media, which averts downward movement of contaminants.
Modeling Earth Systems and Environment, 2016
Water, 2019
In hydrogeological modelling, two approaches are commonly used for model calibration: zonation an... more In hydrogeological modelling, two approaches are commonly used for model calibration: zonation and the pilot-points method. Zonation assumes an abrupt spatial change in parameter values, which could be unrealistic in field applications. The pilot-points method produces smoothly distributed parameters compared to the zonation approach; however, the number and placement of pilot-points can be challenging. The main goal of this paper is to explore the effect of pilot-points number and locations on the calibrated parameters. A 3D groundwater flow model was built for the northern karst aquifer of Qatar. A conceptual model of this aquifer was developed based on MODFLOW software (United States Geological Survey). The model was calibrated using the parameter estimation and uncertainty analysis (PEST) package employing historical data of groundwater levels. The effect of the number and locations of pilot-points was examined by running the model using a variable numbers of points and several ...
... ANALYSIS IN GROUNDWATER MODELLING on der p kultät für f uingenieurwesen der heinis hE estfäli... more ... ANALYSIS IN GROUNDWATER MODELLING on der p kultät für f uingenieurwesen der heinis hE estfälis hen e hnis hen ro hs hule e hen zur irl ngung des k demis hen qr des eines hoktors der sngenieurwissens h ften genehmigte hissert tion vorgelegt von ...
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Papers by Husam Baalousha