ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Global Change and the Future Ocean
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1670000
This article is part of the Research TopicRiver Delta: Scientific Understanding, Risks, and Challenges FacedView all articles
Integration of Geospatial technology and AHP model for assessing groundwater potentiality in Arid Regions: A case study in Wadi Araba Basin, Western Coast of Gulf of Suez, Egypt
Provisionally accepted
- 1Tanta University Faculty of Science, Tanta, Egypt
- 2Desert Research Center, Al Matariyyah, Egypt
- 3Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
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In arid regions such as Wadi Araba, Egypt, water scarcity is a significant challenge driven by the complex hydrogeological settings and limited field data, all while demand continues to grow for water for domestic, agricultural, and industrial needs. Additionally, the basin flows westward into the Gulf of Suez, generating a slight deltaic fan connecting inland recharge movement with coastal sedimentary and hydrological activities. The groundwater recharge potential in Wadi Araba was mapped using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) within a GIS framework, which is the research objective. Using ArcGIS 10.8 ten thematic layers were weighted and combined to create a groundwater potential map that shows how surface, climate, and structure affect it. The study revealed that Wadi Araba has three distinct categories of groundwater potential: low (28.45%) in the northern and southern zones, intermediate (56.9%) in the middle and western sections, and high (14.65%) in the northeastern basin near the Gulf of Suez. These patterns match up with changes in slope, soil permeability, rainfall, and the number of structural elements like drainage and lineaments. Finally, ROC–AUC analysis using 13 field-verified locations was used to check the accuracy of the derived zones and the results indicated that the prediction accuracy was 78.7%. Accordingly, Accessible sites are groundwater indicators in this arid area with few wells and springs. This study is the first to use an AHP-GIS-based method to map the potential for groundwater in Wadi Araba, Egypt. The results provide an excellent basis for planning sustainable groundwater use in similar arid regions with little field data. [41]
Keywords: Wadi Araba, Gulf of Suez Coast and Deltas, remote sensing, GIS modeling, Groundwater potentiality, AHP techniques, Climate Change
Received: 21 Jul 2025; Accepted: 30 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Salem, Al Temamy, Abu-Alam, Mesallam and Fahil. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Tamer Abu-Alam, tamer.abu-alam@uit.no
Mona Aziz Mesallam, m.a.mesallam1992@gmail.com
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