Features
Hope in a Dry Land
U of G geographers help Jordan better manage scarce water resources
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| Prof. Ze’ev Gedalof poses with a camel in the desert in southern Jordan. He’s working with U of G and Jordanian colleagues to help prevent further land degradation caused by the Middle Eastern country’s heavy use of groundwater and rapid growth. PHOTO BY CATHERINE CHAMPAGNE |
BY ANDREW VOWLES
Helping Jordan stem desertification and make better use of its increasingly scarce water resources is the goal of an international project involving three faculty in the Department of Geography.
Under the three-year $458,000 project funded by NATO's Science for Peace and Security Program, the Guelph professors hope to help prevent further land degradation caused by the Middle Eastern country's heavy use of groundwater and rapid growth in population and industry.
Those pressures are speeding desertification, particularly in the semi-arid northwestern corner of the country near the capital, Amman, says Prof. Bill Nickling. A desert geomorphologist who studies wind and water erosion, he leads the initiative along with Jawad Al-Bakri of the University of Jordan's agriculture faculty.
"Desertification is not a state, it's a process," says Nickling.
This process causes irreversible land degradation and has become one of the most challenging environmental problems in developing countries, including many arid and semi-arid lands around the Mediterranean, he says.
Besides his Jordanian colleagues, Nickling is collaborating with Guelph geographers Prof. Aaron Berg, an expert in remote sensing and hydrology, and Prof. Ze'ev Gedalof, a plant ecologist.
They'll use remote sensing and bioindicators such as plants and soil to assess and monitor the process.
They're working in a 1,400-square-kilometre area in northern Jordan, near the Syrian and Israeli borders. This is the main source of surface water for the country, but resources are threatened.
Land is degrading more quickly as groundwater is increasingly depleted and as rapid population growth occurs nearby, particularly on more viable agricultural land. Besides higher erosion, the soil is becoming saltier and less fertile.
Jordan has one of the highest immigration rates in the world, including Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Egyptians. "There's been a huge population increase on the most arable land," says Gedalof. As relatively wealthy refugees buy up farmland, farmers and pastoralists are forced onto poorer land, causing further degradation and desertification.
Adds Berg: "Our co-workers want an action plan to combat desertification. If you want to get a handle on desertification, you have to get a handle on erosion-control issues."
The U of G professors will help develop tools and ideas for Jordan and for Middle Eastern countries facing similar problems. They will sample the area and use remote sensing by satellite — a particular strength of the Department of Geography — to refine desertification models.
Specifically, Berg will use data from Canada's Radarsat-2, launched in 2007, for measuring soil moisture content. He will visit Jordan for the first time next year.
Gedalof will use a system he's developed to map and monitor changes in vegetation as indicators of desertification. Seeing where and how the landscape is being degraded will help in remediation efforts, he says.
None of the Guelph professors had worked in the Middle East before. "It's been a real
eye-opener," says Nickling, whose erosion studies have taken him from Antarctica to New Mexico.
Al-Bakri had contacted him last year for help. "They wanted to develop a real-time model to identify areas quickly undergoing desertification. The only way to do that is remote sensing."
Partnering with Guelph enabled the Jordanians to secure NATO program funding. Jordan hopes to obtain additional research funding after 2012.
For U of G, the project offers a way to apply research strengths to a pressing development issue.
Says Berg: "We have expertise to solve environmental problems."
Gedalof and Nickling say they felt safe during visits to the area this year, despite its proximity to Syria, the West Bank and Israel. "You don't feel the war," says Nickling.
What does come home for Canadians is the different perspective on water in an arid land.
Nickling recalls that several Jordanian visitors who came to a barbecue at his home this summer were aghast at North Americans' water use.
"We didn't do the dishes until they left," he says. "Turning on the tap to fill a sink full of water was absolutely foreign to them."