Civil Engineering PhD tackles water crisis in Jordan
A University of Liverpool Civil Engineering PhD student has just returned from fieldwork in Jordan where her work is helping policy-makers and environmental managers tackle one of the world’s most urgent water resource challenges.
Esraa Tarawneh, herself a Jordanian national, is working in Liverpool on a prestigious Jordanian scholarship. She spent a week in the country in October 2013, conducting extensive sediment sampling across a large watershed south of the capital, Amman. This study area drains into a dammed reservoir which was constructed in 2002 to supply water to the millions of residents of Amman, in a process known as artificial groundwater recharge. However, because of Jordan’s semi-arid climate and seasonal rainfall, large volumes of sediment are accumulating at the dam, reducing its capacity and ability to supply a growing population.
Esraa’s project is concerned with another potential problem – water contamination. So far, no studies have been made of whether, and how, pollutants arising from farms, industries and residential areas in the watershed are also being accumulated in the sediments at the dam, posing a threat to groundwater quality. In an area where groundwater reserves are already under extreme stress, any potential threat is important and Esraa’s project provides a model for applying primary scientific research to pressing environmental engineering challenges.
In addition to the fieldwork programme, Esraa and her Liverpool supervisor, Dr Jonathan Bridge, were invited to address a meeting of the Jordanian Society for Science and Culture and discuss the growing water crisis in the region, made worse by the current influx of refugees from Syria. It is hoped that Esraa’s example, where a PhD scholarship can be used to focus international research attention towards critical humanitarian research needs, can be used as a model to encourage investment in more postgraduate scholarships in the UK. Tarawneh and Bridge were proud to represent Liverpool at the leading edge of this effort.