Flashfloods in Arid Desert Regions





Due to the increase in urban and agricultural activities in arid regions, the exploration of new locations of possible groundwater discharge and accumulation is required to augment the limited water resources. In order to locate such discharge areas, it is necessary first to identify zones of high recharge potentials. In such an arid region, like the northern United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the ways to predict areas of potential groundwater recharge is by understanding the hydrological response of its drainage basins to rainfall events. Due to the scarcity of basic hydrological data, a hydrological model driven mainly by information on the physiographic characteristics, drainage network properties, and surface cover distribution was used to comprehend the dynamics of surface runoff through hydrographs, and hence water loss in the study area. Results show that the northern UAE is drained by 48 drainage basins emerging from the Oman Mountains.

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