Locating Dam Sites For Water Harvesting : Case Study Of Najaf Province, Iraq

The Middle East is considered as an arid area. Iraq was an exception due to the presence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. After 1970, the flow of these rivers started to decrease due to climate change and building of dams in the upper parts of the catchments of the rivers. Now, Iraq is experiencing water shortage problems. Rain water harvesting will definitely minimize the effect of water shortage problems. In this research an arid area was selected (al Najaf) to find out the best sites for water harvesting using GIS techniques. The good agreement between the results from a simple GIS model and observations in cases such as al Najaf Sea is indicating a promising future for GIS application in hydrological modeling. The present study proposed a function formula of estimating suitable dam site using existing geographic information map such as the digital elevation maps. It is expected that it will save time, cost and work force. Finally, through the contour map of the study area, the lowest three elevation values at the governorate level were observed (20, 40, 60m). Based on these values, three possibilities were suggested to select the dam sites.Validerad;2020;Nivå 1;2019-12-17 (johcin)