Identification of Groundwater Potential Areas in Arid Land Using Remote Sensing and GIS: A Case Study for the Adrar region of Northern Mauritania

摘要

This paper discusses about a methodology concerning the detection and evaluation of groundwater potential zone using the integration of remote sensing and GIS. The study area covers the main watersheds of northern Mauritania (namely wadi Seguelli andwadi Labiadh). This zone is a part of the arid land of West African Sahara desert, which covers up two-thirds of Mauritania extending from the north to the sub-Saharan Sahel. It has been suffering for decades from water shortage for domestic, agricultural and pastoral use. Several studies has been carried out to overcome the prevailed problems, however, none of them used the integration of Remote Sensing and GIS. In this study, we applied remote sensing and GIS techniques and a weighted overlay analysisfor qualitative model in the absence of quantitative data to identify groundwater potential zone. In addition, we deployed the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) to permit an effective combination of different thematic maps. The analytical results show that potential groundwater zones are located in the valleys of main wadi with two percent of high to excellent potentiality zones, sixty-four percent of unsuitable zone (this zone extends from the North-East to the South-East) and twenty-four percentof very poor potentiality. These numbers portray the serious water shortage in this region and the effectiveness of the presented method for arid land water resources planning.