Developing a Remote Sensing-Based Approach for Agriculture Water Accounting in Amman Zarqa Basin

In regions facing water scarcity, such as Jordan, accurate measuring and tracking of water usage is crucial to prevent depletion of water resources. This can be done by implementing water accounting to reveal opportunities for reuse and recycling. In this study, water accounting plus (WA+) and open-access remote sensing data from the FAO water productivity portal (WaPOR) were applied to develop agricultural water accounting (AWA) and quantify the inflows, outflows, and water consumption in the Amman Zarqa Basin (AZB) for the period 2014–2022. An assessment is made for WaPOR data utility in AWA. Results showed positive correlations between WaPOR precipitation data and rainfall station records and WAPOR actual evapotranspiration (ET) data with standard ET calculated by FAO56PM method. Results of the AWA showed considerable non-consumed water that could be recovered, with the beneficial fraction surpasses the non-beneficial fraction. Findings showed that Utilized Land Use controls the water balance of the AZB with the highest water consumption around 63%. The analysis of (P - ETa) revealed that the AZB is a water net generator with precipitation consistently being greater than total ET. It is crucial to investigate the pathways and processes involved in the movement of excess rainfall into underground basins. This study highlights the importance to Jordan of leveraging remote sensing datasets such as WaPOR to quantify National Water Budget parameters in addition to bridging data gaps and thus improving water availability and consumption.