Artificial Recharge of Groundwater in Tunisia: A Long and Fruitful Experience

Groundwater Artificial RechargeArtificial recharge (AR) is considered as an alternative to safeguard groundwater against their overexploitation and quality degradation. This practice which has demonstrated positive results in many aquifersAquifers around the world could be helpful for water management mainly in arid and semi-arid areasArid and semi-arid areas such as Tunisia. Climate changeClimate change impact makes the situation even worse; it is expected that groundwater recharge will be reduced and groundwater salinization will be increased due to seawater intrusion. In Tunisia, AR experiments started since the 70thand it has been considered among the national strategy actions for water development since the 90th. Several techniques of AR have been used such as the infiltrationInfiltration of water throughout the unsaturated zone in basins or water course beds, or recharge wellsRecharge well. However, the AR amount which is dependent on the surface water availability is variable in space and time. Thus, the AR effectiveness is generally not achieved compared to the expectations. The total volume of water used for AR in Tunisia, was equal to 1026 × 106 m3 during 1992–2019. The annual volume used for the year 2019 was around 58 × 106 m3 which has been practiced for 30 aquifersAquifers, approximately. In order to quantify the AR impact, monitoring networks have been set up all around the sites to follow-up the groundwater level and water quality variability. A significant positive impact has been recorded in many cases, which has encouraged the decision makers to continue promoting the AR practices. The long experience of AR practices in Tunisia should be considered as instructive and could be further developed in order to achieve the maximum benefits. It will be interesting to put more emphasis on the assessment of their impacts in order to improve their effectiveness. Research actions using modeling tools coupled with new technologies, should be further developed in this context.