Climate Change Impact in a Shallow Coastal Mediterranean Aquifer, at Saïdia, Morocco

A density dependent numerical flow model was applied to study the climate change impact in an unconfined shallow aquifer in the Mediterranean coast of Morocco. The stresses imposed to the model were derived from the IPCC emission scenarios and included recharge variations, rising sea level and advancing seashore. The simulations show that there will be a significant decline in the renewable freshwater resources and that salinity increases can be quite large but are limited to a restricted area

Evaluation of climate change effects in a coastal aquifer in Morocco using a density-dependent numerical model

A density-dependent numerical groundwater model was applied to study the climate change impact in a shallow aquifer in the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, the Saidia aquifer. The stresses imposed to the model were derived from the IPCC emission scenarios and included recharge variation and sea level rise. The main effect of the climate change in the Saidia aquifer will be a decrease in renewable resources, which in the worst-case scenario may decrease to 50–60% of present-day values, due to the decline in recharge and to a reduced inflow from the adjacent Triffa aquifer. The water quality will be affected mostly in the area immediately adjacent to the seashore, where salinity may increase up to 30 g/l. Localised areas may see a decrease in salinity due to the induced freshwater recharge from Oued Moulouya River and diminished inflow from high-salinity springs

North-eastern Morocco: a high geothermal prospect.

New temperature data obtained in 2007 in a hydrogeological borehole (1100 m deep) near Berkane have revealed an average geothermal gradient of about 126°C/km at depths greater than 300 m. This result confirms the average geothermal gradient estimated in a mining borehole located about 30km west of the Berkane borehole, in which water with temperatures as high as 96°C was reached at a depth of about 700 m. The new geothermal gradient, exceeding by far the ones already determined for this Moroccan area allows thinking about the possibility of programs for using high temperature waters in north-eastern Morocco

New Geothermal Prospect in North-Eastern Morocco

Geothermal data has been indicating promising potentialities in the north-eastern Morocco. This paperpresents new temperature data, recently recorded in water borehole located in the Berkane and Oujda areas. Generally, the observed temperature gradients are rather high. One hole near Berkane, revealed an average geothermal gradient of more than 110 ºC/km at depths greater than 300 m. This result confirms the geothermal gradient estimated in a mining borehole located about 30 km west of the Berkane borehole, in which water temperatures of 96 ºC are reached at a depth of about 700 m. Such a high geothermal gradient, exceeding by far the ones already determined for northeastern Morocco, could act as a stimulus to programs aimed at the geothermal exploitation of high temperature aquifers

A Quantitative Assessment of Forest Cover Change in the Moulouya River Watershed (Morocco) by the Integration of a Subpixel-Based and Object-Based Analysis of Landsat Data

A quantitative assessment of forest cover change in the Moulouya River watershed (Morocco) was carried out by means of an innovative approach from atmospherically corrected reflectance Landsat images corresponding to 1984 (Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper) and 2013 (Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager). An object-based image analysis (OBIA) was undertaken to classify segmented objects as forested or non-forested within the 2013 Landsat orthomosaic. A Random Forest classifier was applied to a set of training data based on a features vector composed of different types of object features such as vegetation indices, mean spectral values and pixel-based fractional cover derived from probabilistic spectral mixture analysis). The very high spatial resolution image data of Google Earth 2013 were employed to train/validate the Random Forest classifier, ranking the NDVI vegetation index and the corresponding pixel-based percentages of photosynthetic vegetation and bare soil as the most statistically significant object features to extract forested and non-forested areas. Regarding classification accuracy, an overall accuracy of 92.34% was achieved. The previously developed classification scheme was applied to the 1984 Landsat data to extract the forest cover change between 1984 and 2013, showing a slight net increase of 5.3% (ca. 8800 ha) in forested areas for the whole region

Structural and hydrogeological features of a Lias carbonate aquifer in the Triffa Plain, NE Morocco

The rising demand for water and the contamination of shallow water table aquifers has led authorities in NE Morocco to look for deeper groundwater resources in the Triffa Plain, namely in Lower Jurassic (Lias) dolomitic limestones. The liassic aquifer is of strategic importance for the development of the region, however, its hydrodynamic behaviour is poorly understood due to lack of hydrogeological data and block structure. This article presents a first effort towards understanding the structure and hydraulic behaviour of the aquifer. Exploration borehole data and results from geophysical campaigns were integrated into a GIS environment to build a preliminary model of the aquifer structure. The aquifer behaves as an unconfined aquifer in the northern part of the Béni Snassen Mountains (the recharge area), but as it dips to the north, it becomes confined by marls and shales of the Middle/Upper Jurassic. Even though piezometric level data are scarce, a tentative piezometric map was produced. Three blocks separated by NW–SE trending faults in a horst and graben structure, with distinct flow behaviours were identified: Berkane, Fezouane and Sidi Rahmoun blocks. Those blocks also show differences in hydraulic conductivity distribution. As a result of the reaction with the dolomitic limestones, the groundwater is of calcium-magnesium bicarbonate type. Groundwater temperature as measured in springs ranges from 29 C to 37 C in springs and constitutes a potential low enthalpy geothermal resource

Structure thermique de la lithosphère à travers la limite des plaques Ibérie - Afrique par modélisation intégrée du flux de chaleur, de la densité et de la topographie le long d’un transect N-S à 3°Ouest

A digital model based on the joint interpretation of thermal and density distribution data presents an exceptionally thin lithosphere beneath Alboran and Rif domains (60 to 90 km).The resulting temperature distribution beneath the Rif and the Alboran sea shows that the depth corresponding to 450 °C does not exceed 20 km. This result is in agreement with the reduction in the seismic activity starting from 20 km depth, which could correspond to the base of the seismogenic zone

Reconstruction of remote climate change from borehole temperature measurement in the eastern part of Morocco

Data from temperature measurements in boreholes are indicators of the temperature variations associated with past climate change. This paper is a contribution to reconstruct the ground surface temperature history (GSTH) from geothermal data in the eastern part of Morocco. From a set of several temperature logs, measured in the study area, only two were found suitable for estimating the ground surface temperature history (GSTH). In order to reconstruct the surface temperature past changes the functional space inversion method (FSI) was used. The inversion reveals a recent warming in the last century with respective amplitude of 0.1 °C and 1 °C for the boreholes 2952 in Oujda and 1624 in Berkane. These results can be confirmed by the air temperature record of the meteorical station in Oujda despite the scarceness of data beyond 1959

Sur la structure hydrogéothermique de la région de Figuig (Haut Atlas oriental, Maroc)

Cette étude consiste à analyser les circonstances tectoniques, hydrogéologiques et géothermiques qui sont à l’origine des sources thermales de la région de Figuig dont les températures varient de 27 à 34 °C. Depuis le nord, la circulation des eaux souterraines dans les formations carbonatées jurassiques est canalisée vers l’oasis de Figuig. Ces eaux émergent à la faveur de failles sous des conditions de gradients géothermiques et de densité de flux de chaleur variant respectivement de 22 à 35 °C/km et 58 à 95 mW/m2