Evaluating spatial variability of groundwater electrical conductivity via geostatistical methods

Abstract EN

This paper aims to evaluate and map the groundwater quality in the Gaza Strip by the means of geostatistical procedures including variograms, Kriging and maps interpolation.

Electrical Conductivity (EC) of water is an easy measure of water quality.

It measures the ability to conduct an electric current due to the breakdown of salts or other chemicals into negatively and positively charged ions.

The purer the water the lower the conductivity.

There are more than 4000 wells within the Gaza Strip, only 109 wells are operated by municipalities.

The results of analysis reveal a critical situation of water quality, where there are only 23 (21.1%) of the wells are below the safe limit, while the other 86 (78.9 %) of the wells exceed the safe limits.

Spatial maps interpolation show that the west region of Gaza governorate tends to get impermissible values of EC.

Furthermore, due to lack of sample from wells in the south east of Gaza strip, high values of prediction errors have been obtained.