Quantitative Assessment of Contested Water Uses and Management in the Conflict-Torn Yarmouk River Basin
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 146, Issue 7
Abstract
The Yarmouk River basin is shared between Syria, Jordan, and Israel. Since the 1960s, Yarmouk River flows have declined more than 85% despite the signature of bilateral agreements. Syria and Jordan blame each other for the decline and have both developed their own explanatory narratives: Jordan considers that Syria violated their 1987 agreement by building more dams than what was agreed on, while Syria blames climate change. In fact, because the two countries do not share information, neither on hydrological flows nor on water management, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between natural and anthropogenic factors affecting the flow regime. Remote sensing and multiagent simulation (MAS) are combined to carry out an independent, quantitative analysis of Jordanian and Syrian competing narratives and show that a third cause for which there is no provision in the bilateral agreements actually explains much of the changes in the flow regime: groundwater overabstraction by Syrian highland farmers.
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Data Availability Statement
All model and code are available in a repository online (Avisse 2020). PERSIANN-CDR, Landsat satellite imagery, SRTM data, and streamflow data were provided by a third party. Direct requests for these materials may be made to the provider as indicated in the “Acknowledgments.”
Acknowledgments
PERSIANN-CDR is developed by the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and is available to the public as an operational climate data record via the NOAA NCDC CDR Program ftp. Landsat satellite images were obtained through the United States Geological Survey (USGS) EarthExplorer. SRTM (C-band) data were released by NASA, and are available at the US Geological Survey’s EROS Data Center. We thank Jordan’s Ministry of Water and Irrigation, and Jordan Valley Authority, for providing Yarmouk discharge records. This work was conducted as part of the Belmont Forum water security theme for which coordination was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant GEO/OAD-1342869 to Stanford University. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The authors acknowledge the financial support of NSERC through grant G8PJ-437384-2012. The authors also thank two anonymous referees for their constructive comments and suggestions.
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Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 146 • Issue 7 • July 2020
Copyright
©2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 22, 2019
Accepted: Feb 5, 2020
Published online: May 4, 2020
Published in print: Jul 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Oct 4, 2020
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