Saleh Zakaria

Water Harvesting and Reservoir Optimization in Selected Areas of South Sinjar Mountain, Iraq

AbstractIraq is experiencing water-resource shortages which are expected to become more severe in the future. It is believed that rainwater harvesting will be one of the solutions to overcome this problem. In this paper, rainwater harvest modeling techniques were applied to the Sinjar area of northwest Iraq for agricultural purposes. A watershed modeling system (WMS) and linear programming (LP) optimization techniques were applied to maximize the irrigated area, which could be supplied by each selected reservoir for the period 1990–2009. This technique proved to be efficient for solving large-scale water supply problems with multiple parameters and constraints, including the required input data for the model. Two scenarios of operation were considered for each main basin. In the first, each reservoir was operated as a separate unit while, in the second, all reservoirs within the basin were operated as one system. Both scenarios gave encouraging results but Scenario 2 provided better results.

Future Prospects for Macro Rainwater Harvesting (RWH) Technique in North East Iraq

Countries in Middle East and North Africa (MENA region) are considered as arid and semi-arid areas that are suffering from water scarcity. They are expected to have more water shortages problem due to climatic change. Iraq is located in the Middle East covering an area of 433,970 square kilometers populated by 31 million inhabitants. One of the solutions suggested to overcome water scarcity is Rainwater Harvesting (RWH). In this study Macro rainwater harvesting technique had been tested for future rainfall data that were predicted by two emission scenarios of climatic change (A2 and B2) for the period 2020-2099 at Sulaimaniyah Governorate north east of Iraq. Future volumes of total runoff that might be harvested for different conditions of maximum, average, and minimum future rainfall seasons under both scenarios (A2 and B2) were calculated. The results indicate that the volumes of average harvested runoff will be reduced when average rainfall seasons are considered due to the effect of climatic change on future rainfall. The reduction reached 10.82 % and 43.0% when scenarios A2 and B2 are considered respectively.

Historical and Future Climatic Change Scenarios for Temperature and Rainfall for Iraq

The world is facing a big challenge of climatic change, mainly due to increasing concentrations of GHGs (greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere. Many researches indicated that the climate change occurred disproportionately on developing countries such as MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries. The climatic model CGCM3.1 (T47) 2 is used in this research to explain the changes in average temperatures and the rainfall on the MENA region with special emphases on Iraq. Historical records (1900-2009) and future (2020-2099) were studied and compared; each period was divided to four sub-periods of thirty years. The results showed that the average monthly temperature for the four historical periods fluctuated between the lowest and highest value as follows: 9.2-32.9, 10.3-32.7, 9.3-32.8 and 8.6-33.9 (oC). The rainfall for historical periods kept on the same distribution during the past 109 years, and fluctuated between the lowest and highest value of 21.3 mm and 37.6 mm with an average that reached up to 26.51 mm. For the future period, the maximum average monthly temperature reached up to 37.41 ( o C) during June and minimum average monthly temperature reached up to 4.24 (oC) during January. The average monthly temperature fluctuated giving a clear impression that the future portends a higher temperature. The average monthly rainfall, for the future period, fluctuated between the lowest and highest value of 12.91 mm and 20.63 mm with an average that reached 16.84 mm which represent a reduction percentage of about 36.47% relative to the historical record of rainfall for the same months. Climatic change is the biggest challenge facing the world. The change in the climatic system is mainly due to the increase in the concentration of GHGs (greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere. It is believed that the human activities are responsible for the increase of GHGs concentrations since the industrial revolution due to burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil