Hydrology of the Jordan River Basin: Watershed Delineation, Precipitation and Evapotranspiration

The Jordan River Basin is shared between Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan and Palestine; the waters of the River are a critical resource for the future water security of the co-riparians. Because of the political situation in the region, field data such as rainfall and evapotranspiration are very difficult to obtain making the use of remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) very useful to study water availability in the basin. The approach used in this paper integrates recently compiled data derived from satellite imagery (evapotranspiration, rainfall, and digital elevation model) into a GIS geodatabase to measure the contribution of each riparian country to the total available water in the basin.