Spatio-temporal Modeling of Jask Plain Groundwater Level from 1997 to 2013

The over-exploitation of groundwater has led to many problems in the country. Since groundwater level is a variable that varies over the time and place, it can be considered as a spatio-temporal dataset. The purpose of this study is to investigate the spatial-temporal variation of the groundwater level in Jask plain from 1997 to 2013 to determine the spatial trend of groundwater changes. First, interpolation was carried out based on the Kriging and the Radial Basis Functions (RBF), and then accuracy was evaluated using MBE, MAE and RMSE statistics. The findings suggested that, compared with RBF, Kriging can estimate groundwater levels more accurately in the study area. Consequently, for each time in the study period, a groundwater level map was produced based of the method. To identify the spatial variability of the groundwater level, R2 and Man-Kendall test were used. The results of the R2 statistics indicated a significant variation in the water level. Similarly, the results of the Man-Kendall test showed a decreasing trend in the north-to-northwest margin with a high intensity of nearly -1. Generally, in different parts of the study area, the process of change has a specific and meaningful pattern.