Monitoring spatiotemporal variation of groundwater level and salinity under land use change using integrated field measurements, GIS, geostatistical, and remote-sensing approach: case study of the Feija aquifer, Middle Draa watershed, Moroccan Sahara.

The cultivation of watermelons has been a fast growing agriculture industry in the arid, desert regions of Morocco, relying on groundwater pumping and transformation of rangelands to farms due to growing demand for the fruit in national and international markets. This study aims to measure the impact of watermelon expansion on groundwater resources in the Feija Basin, which is one of the largest watermelon cultivation areas in Southern Morocco. Field measurements, statistics, Kriging interpolation, and regression methods were used to measure the temporal variations in the groundwater level (GL) and salinity between 2013 and 2018 to determine the correlation between different parameters.