Effects of Management and Climate Scenarios on Groundwater Level Changes: Case Numerical Modeling Study in Salmas Plain Aquifer

In recent decades, several factors such as population growth, limited surface water resources due to reduced rainfall, and over-withdrawal of aquifers have caused a sharp drop in groundwater levels (GWLs) in many plains of Iran, including Salmas plain located in the province of West Azerbaijan. In this study, the numerical model of the Salmas plain aquifer was prepared using MODFLOW model in GMS software in both states of steady flow (September 2015) and non-steady flow (from September 2016 to August 2017). The input parameters of the model were calibrated for the measured values of GWL at the location of observation wells and validated from August 2016 to July 2018. Finally, the GWL was investigated applying 6 scenarios including a 10% to 30% decrease in pumping wells and a 5% to 15% increase in rainfall. The results of studied scenarios showed that reducing the pumping rate of the wells significantly improves the condition of groundwater resources. By reducing the pumping rate of the wells up to 30%, the volume of groundwater will increase by 13.66 mcm and shortage of the aquifer reservoir will be compensated. However, 15% increase in annual rainfall will improve the condition of the aquifer by only 0.5 mcm. Results show that reducing the rate of withdrawal from wells reduced the amount of groundwater flow entering the aquifer from 41.98 mcm in the calibration state of the model to 38.7 mcm in terms of 30% reduction of discharge rate in the wells. However, the increase in rainfall did not cause significant changes in the amount of groundwater inflow and outflow. The results of this study indicate that management scenarios such as preventing over-withdrawal from authorized wells and blocking unauthorized wells have more significant effects on improving the GWL than possible climatic scenarios.