Hydrologic Modeling Using SWAT and GIS, Application to Subwatershed Bab-Merzouka (Sebou, Morocco)

Abstract

Water management in morocco faces significant challenges in both levels, quality and quantity, in order to address these challenges and to secure the rational and efficient management of water resources, it is necessary to try to understand the different issues involved in the water cycle works! The large number of hydrological studies and techniques used at the Sebou watershed are limited to water quality, and the use of the simpler empirical models, that, do not permit to take into consideration all the factors affecting flow and cycle of water. In the purpose of using the hydrological model SWAT to study the hydrological functioning of the Sebou watershed (Morocco) which faces many problems regarding the management of its water resources like all the other watersheds in our country, this study focuses on the creation, organization and generation of input data (soil, soil occupation, climate…) using a GIS (ARCGIS) then, the configuration and calibration of the model and after that, the evaluation of the results. The main reason behind this work is to measure the adaptability of this model to the selected area in order to generalize the model to the whole Sebou watershed. The results are satisfying; they show that this model can represent the overall hydrological regime of the pilot basin Bab-Merzouka. This model can open up new perspectives regarding the effects of climate change, and the changes caused by humans on water resources, in terms of both quantity and quality.