Modeling of the Aleppo City Basin

Ahlam Aslan

Abstract: Groundwater is the main source of drinking and irrigation water in most arid and semi-arid countries. In such environments, management of water resources is the key challenge for sustainable development projects. During the years of war, Aleppo city suffered from repeated water outages from its main source, the pumping station in Khafsa on the Euphrates River. This prompted the Ministry of Water Resources to find urgent and emergency solutions to ensure water access for residents. The first phase involved drilling 150 emergency wells in the western parts of Aleppo, followed by a second phase where 51 additional wells were drilled to integrate them into the emergency plan. In this study, we mapped the wells and linked them to the Syrian stereographic network using GIS software, relying on the Syrian geological map, which was aligned with geological cross-sections of the study area to display well locations within the city. We then examined the hydrogeological conditions of the well-drilling areas by creating hydrogeological cross-sections using RockWorks17 software, enabling us to establish the geological model of the studied region. All data related to the wells exploited in the study area were compiled and documented based on individual pumping test reports for each well. We monitored periodic measurements of water levels in the studied wells from mid-2016 to the present. Finally, we used ModFlow software to create hydrographs of groundwater levels for wells with continuous periodic measurements.

Keywords: 3-D geological model, Emergency wells, Groundwater reservoir, MODFLOW, RockWorks