Effect of traditional check dams (jessour) on soil and olive trees water status in Tunisia.

In the arid regions of south eastern Tunisia, the land use is predominated by olive trees cropping, where two main cultivation strategies can be found: using of water harvesting techniques to overcome the scarcity and variability of rainfall (in the Matmata mountains) and dryland farming (in the Jeffara plain). In these arid areas, soil moisture is the main limiting factor for crop growth and it should be monitored to benchmark different management options. Different conventional methods are available for point soil moisture monitoring, but the increased availability of remotely sensed data offers major opportunities for spatial analyses. The aim of this paper is to perform a comparative study on the soil water status for rainfed olive tree growing in three major landscape areas: in the mountains with traditional water harvesting check dams (called jessour), in the piedmont on floodwater harvesting (called tabias), and in the plain with full dryland farming conditions. Time series of Normalized Difference Infrared Index (NDII), derived from Landsat 7 satellite, were retrieved from the novel Google Earth Engine platform. NDII values were related to measured soil water content, which was taken at non-regular time intervals between 2009 and 2017. The analysis of NDII data, indicating the water content of the vegetation, shows that jessour can adequately ensure water supply for olive trees. Increased soil moisture conditions in the jessour areas are visible both in the dry and the humid seasons, indicating the effectiveness of this traditional water harvesting system. Moreover, our results show that Landsat 7 NDII values are correlated with the root-zone soil moisture in the monitoring sites (r2 ranging from 0.62 to 0.67), allowing the use of NDII to estimate soil water contents in our study area.

An integrated approach for impact assessment of water harvesting techniques in dry areas: the case of oued Oum Zessar watershed (Tunisia).

In the arid regions of Tunisia, considerable investments are being made to maintain the old water harvesting techniques and introduce new ones to capture the scarce amount of rainwater (100 mm to 230 mm annually) for agricultural and domestic purposes. However, no detailed assessment of the multiple effects and the costs and benefits of these techniques have been made so far. This paper summarizes the results of an in depth investigation of the multiple impacts (runoff mobilization, ground water recharge, agro-socio-economic impacts) of the water harvesting works undertaken in the watershed of oued Oum Zessar (southeastern Tunisia). The importance of interdisciplinary and integrated approaches was revealed through this detailed impact assessment and economic evaluation. In fact, the profitability of the water harvesting works depends largely on the criteria chosen. However, further refinements are needed to better include all possible impacts (positive and negative) that occur as a result of the installation of the water harvesting structures.