Shammout, M.; Shatanawi, M.; Nelson, J. Curve Number Applications for Restoration the Zarqa River Basin. Sustainability 2018, 10, 586, doi:10.3390/su10030586.
Shammout, M.; Shatanawi, M.; Nelson, J. Curve Number Applications for Restoration the Zarqa River Basin. Sustainability 2018, 10, 586, doi:10.3390/su10030586.
Shammout, M.; Shatanawi, M.; Nelson, J. Curve Number Applications for Restoration the Zarqa River Basin. Sustainability 2018, 10, 586, doi:10.3390/su10030586.
Shammout, M.; Shatanawi, M.; Nelson, J. Curve Number Applications for Restoration the Zarqa River Basin. Sustainability 2018, 10, 586, doi:10.3390/su10030586.
Abstract
The heavy demand of water resources from the Zarqa River Basin (ZRB) has resulted in a base-flow reduction of the River from 5m3/s to less than 1m3/s. This paper aims at predicting Curve Numbers (CN) as a baseline scenario and proposing restoration scenarios for ZRB. The method includes classifying the soil type and land use, predicting CNs, and proposing CN restoration scenarios. Prediction of existing CNs will be in parallel with the runoff prediction using the US Army Corps of Engineers HEC-1 Model, and Rainfall-Runoff Model (RRM). The models have been set up at the land use distribution of 0.3% water body, 9.3% forest and orchard, 71% mixture of grass, weeds, and desert shrubs, 7.0% crops, 4.0% urban areas, and 8.4% bare soil. The results show that CN under dry condition are 59, 78 under a normal condition and 89 under a wet condition. During vegetation period, CN are 52, 72 and 86 for the dry, normal and wet condition respectively. The restoration scenarios; CN decreases runoff, and increases soil moisture when using the contours, terraces and crop residues. Analyzing results of CN scenarios will be a fundamental tool to support end-users related to their targets to achieve watershed restoration.
Keywords
water scarcity; watershed restoration; land use distribution; soil type; curve number; Zarqa River’s flow simulation; end-users
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.