Calculating man-made depletion of a stressed multiple aquifer resource on a national scale.

An inexorable depletion of groundwater occurs where groundwater abstraction exceeds the natural recharge, a typical state of (semi-)arid regions, which calls for sustainable management of groundwater resources. This study aims to assess the available storage and recharge rates on a national scale in time and space by modelling the natural recharge in combination with a method to evaluate changing groundwater volumes, which revealed measures to quantify the overdraft of the observed national groundwater resources in Jordan. Applying the combination of hydrological model and method to evaluate changing groundwater volumes, a climate-driven systematic decline of groundwater recharge was eliminated as responsible process, while overdraft leads to dropping groundwater tables.