Southern Morocco is part of the vast arid belt of Africa (35%), where water is fundamental to the survival of local populations and their daily lives.
However, hydrological data in this area are almost entirely lacking. This scarcity of information makes it very difficult to accurately estimate surface runoff, groundwater recharge, and available water resources, or to design secure drinking-water systems and sustainable development plans.
The characterization of a desert basin, Downscaling of precipitations, Hydrological modelling with Horton with HEC-HMS, And finally Assessment of the water cycle components.
In the studied basin, evapotranspiration is extremely high (94%), due to sandy soils, strong soil heating, intense winds, and limited deep infiltration.
This removes most of the effective rainfall and leads to very low groundwater recharge (0.66%), making aquifers highly vulnerable to overexploitation.
In contrast, surface water is a key resource, but surface runoff is episodic and concentrated in intense runoff events, which calls for storage and regulation structures (small dams, retention basins, managed aquifer recharge) to capture and use these episodic flows.