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Trend analysis of rainfall and drought over the Oum Er-Rbia River Basin in Morocco during 1970–2010

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Abstract

In a context of water scarcity in Morocco, the proper management of water resources is becoming a national priority. However, the strong spatiotemporal fluctuation of rainfall, considered as the first source of surface water intakes, complicates attempts to work on such a long-term purpose. In this work, we aim to provide an analysis of rainfall variability over the Oum Er-Rbia (OER) River basin, one of the most important basins in Morocco. For this, we assessed the annual rainfall deficit using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and then analyzed trends at annual, seasonal, and monthly bases using the Mann–Kendall test. The study was conducted on a set of data from 15 stations over a 40-years period (1970–2010). The results show that the OER River basin tends towards drier conditions. An abundance of deficit seasons has been noticed (50 to 63% of the seasons), especially after 1980–1981. Since then, the basin has known several deficit periods, sometimes of great spatial extent such as those that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, during the study period, the total annual rainfall has demonstrated a general decreasing tendency. The latter was mainly induced by changes in winter and spring months, which experienced some of the largest decline rates with a special abundant significance during the month of April.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Oum Er-Rbia Hydraulic Basin Agency and the Regional Office for Agricultural Development of Tadla for providing the observed rainfall data that we used in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Sciences and Techniques, Water Resources Management and Valorization and Remote Sensing Team, Sultan Moulay Slimane University, B.P 523, Mghila, Beni Mellal, Morocco

    Hamza Ouatiki, Abdelghani Boudhar, Abdelkrim Arioua, Mohammed Hssaisoune & Hafsa Bouamri

  2. Faculty of Sciences and Techniques, Department of Mathematics, Sultan Moulay Slimane University, B.P 523, Mghila, Beni-Mellal, Morocco

    Aziz Ouhinou

  3. National Institute of Agricultural Research, B.P 415 R.P, 10000, Rabat, Morocco

    Tarik Benabdelouahab

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  1. Hamza Ouatiki
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  2. Abdelghani Boudhar
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  3. Aziz Ouhinou
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  4. Abdelkrim Arioua
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Correspondence to Hamza Ouatiki.

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Editorial handling: Fernando Al Pacheco

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Ouatiki, H., Boudhar, A., Ouhinou, A. et al. Trend analysis of rainfall and drought over the Oum Er-Rbia River Basin in Morocco during 1970–2010. Arab J Geosci 12, 128 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-019-4300-9

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