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The use of suburban water tables in the arid strips of land in Syria: a sign of degradation or of transformation? Volume 13, issue 1, Mars 2002

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Institut universitaire d'études du développement (IUED), 24, rue Rothschild, case postale 136, CH 1211 Genève 21.
  • Page(s) : 43-50
  • Published in: 2002

The circulation of surface and subsurface water is, in the study area, one of the main factors explaining the high variability in terms of edaphic aridity. Subsurface water tables were exploited as early as the antiquity and the hydraulic structures, in particular from the Byzantine period, were at least partly restored and utilized by the farmers and semi-nomads who settled in the area in the second half of the 19th century. The lowering of subsurface water tables, in the 1960s and 1970s, as a result of the uncontrolled increase in the number of wells and the consequent drying of ancient irrigation systems have often been interpreted as a sign of degradation in the use of water resources. The analysis of changes in irrigated areas since the 1950s provides a somewhat different picture. It appears that the use of subsurface water is more intensive than in the past, which reduces losses, and that it is globally more efficient.