he Maximum Permissible Flow rate (MPF) is defined as the quantity of water that can

be extracted from a well without affecting the aquifer and the productive well. So,
pumping of water from a well should not exceed the optimal flow rate in order to avoid
excess costs, depletion of water level and the interaction between the radius of
influence of two adjacent wells. One of the major problems in the study area (Hail
Agriculture Development Co., HADCO) is that wells are dug in advance and the
distance between wells is either horizontal or vertical in direction. Maximum Permissible
Flow rate (MPF) is an unstable value depending on the value of dry zone, space or
distance between wells and physio-chemical properties of subsurface layer of each well.
Therefore, the concept of maximum water withdrawal should consider that the well is in
good condition and is not damaged from continuous use. Also, there is no effect from
interaction between the radius of influence and the cone of depression between
adjacent wells. It is also clear that the concept of radius of flow velocity of underground
water increases near the center of the well. This increase in flow velocity allows the
movement of colloidal particles from the aquifer around the well casing thus increasing
the pressure loss due to blockage of pump filter resulting in high drawdown of water in
the well (Ali et al., 1997). Furthermore, mathematically the groundwater velocity can be
expressed at any point by the movement of groundwater zone through each section of
the porous material (solid part and pores) which is equal to the value of specific flow
rate (well pumping flow rate, Q) or called Darcy velocity to total cross-sectional area
(A) depending on the flow direction as follows:

(1)

Where q is the actual flow velocity of groundwater to the cross-sectional area and is
measured by the space of the porous material of aquifers. Therefore, the actual
velocity of groundwater is much more than velocity of Darcy (Nonner, 2003).

The relationship between the actual velocity (Va) and velocity of Darcy (V) is as follows:

(2)

where, Acap is the sum of cross sectional area of the capillary tubes. The porosity (n) is
(Acap/A).

Equation 2 can also be written in another form, after dividing the drainage capacity on
porosity (n), as follows:

(3)

where, Acap is the cross-sectional area close to the well in the aquifer. From physical
point of view, the velocity near the center of the well depends on the distribution of
particle density of aquifer and the hydraulic conductivity than other hydrological
factors. All these factors can be obtained by estimation using the empirical correlation.
This correlation is based on the observation from a numbers of wells. Driscoll
(1986) observed a strong relationship between the hydraulic conductivity (K) and the
depletion of ground water. This relationship can also be expressed empirically by using
approach velocity (Va) equation with the introduction of safety factor according
to Huisman (1972). This equation can be written as follows:

Equation 3 gives accurate measurement of hydraulic conductivity. This can be verified

by pumping test or by the measurement of specific flow rate of each well. However, the
other alternative approach is Logan (1964) method that was used in the present study
for calculating the conductivity coefficient. After that, this coefficient was converted to
hydraulic conductivity by dividing the conductivity coefficient by the thickness of
aquifer. Equation 3 can be rewritten to determine the Maximum Permissible Flow rate
(MPF) as follows:

(4)

where, rwi is the radius of irrigation well, Ki is the hydraulic conductivity, b is the
thickness of the ground water reservoir and n is the number of wells in the study area.

Besides, implementation of the second phase of water management program requires

interaction between the drawdown and rate of pumping water from a well at a critical
level of 5%. In fact, if water is pumped from two or more adjacent wells from the same
aquifer layer, it shows interaction between the drawdown and flow rate of well resulting
in more drawdown in groundwater. This interaction between radius of influence among
the wells will cause high water level depletion in many wells. As the aquifer in the study
area is of closed type, so the flux equation in the steady state for any well can be
written as follows:

(5)

where, Swi is the level of drawdown in irrigation well, Ri is the effective well Radius, Ti is
conductivity coefficient, the value of the conductivity coefficient can be expressed by
Ti. Equation 5 is the vertical distribution in wells without receiving any recharge from
surface sources Al-Naeem (1999) conducted studies that used the effective well Radius
as follows:

(6)
By substituting Eq. 6 in Eq. 5 we obtained:

(7)

After rearranging Eq. 7, the value of the maximum permissible drawdown in wells can
be obtained as follows:

(8)

All the variables in Eq. 8 are known except the value of water drawdown (Swi) in the
wells. Equation 8 can be used to calculate the maximum permissible drawdown for each
well. The main advantage of the last method is that it does not consider the distance
between the wells. By this way it can be converted to a series of effective well radius
(Rwi) by using Eq. 6. Also, it is possible to determine the distances between the
adjacent wells from the well map. Assuming that Dab indicate the distance between two
wells close to each other at location a and b and there are many unknown wells (n).
Which means that there are many wells with different distances and interactions with
each other. It can be calculated from n (n-1)/2. Each distance must be equal or more
than the summation of the effective radius of two close (adjacent) wells. This close
distance can be expressed as follows:

(9)

Which represents the algebraic distance in the administrative program. At the critical
level Eq. 9 can be rewritten as follows:

(10)

where, α is the critical level. It is clear that if a critical level is equal to zero (this means
that there is no interaction between the wells), Eq. 10 is converted to Eq. 9 after
obtaining the effective radius of well. It has to be satisfied for each two wells using Eq.
10. If the algebraic distance in Eq. 10 is unsatisfied, the value of α will be equal to 0.05.
In this case, the value of effective radius of a well has to be reduced until the same
value of algebra distance is obtained in Eq. 10 and this value is satisfied. Therefore, the
value of maximum permissible drawdown in well water can be calculated as follows:

(11)
By this method, all the adjacent wells were investigated to obtain final values of water
drawdown and the radius of wells. Hence, the permissible groundwater flow velocity
can be calculated as follows:

(12)

According to the method of Theis (1935), the values of aquifer properties such as
hydraulic conductivity (K), water layer storage coefficient (S) and permissibility factor
(T) can be estimated. The value of (T) can be obtained from water pumping
experiments. Theis (1935) method can be derived from the following equation:

(13)

Equation 13 can be written in terms of radial coordinator as follows:

(14)

In 1935, Thiees created a solution to the differential Eq. 14 for unstable flow in two
directions based on the symmetry between the groundwater flow and thermal
conductivity as follows:

(15)

where, the value of u is:

(16)

Whereas, s = (ho-h) is the level of drawdown (meter) at any point which is the distance
from the observation well to the pumping well at a steady flow rate, Q represents the
well discharge in m3 per unit time (L3 t-1), r is the radius of influence which is the
distance between the pumping well to the observation well. T is the starting time from
the beginning of pumping.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The development and implementation of the mathematical model program for the
management of groundwater in Saq sand aquifer was carried in the south-east part of
the Hail northern region of Saudi Arabia (Hail Agriculture Development Co., HADCO).
The study area is located between longitudes 42°39'-43°E and width of 27°16'-27°23'
N. It is about 120 km from the province of Hail. The study area covers an area of
approximately 350 km2 and is rectangular in shape (Fig. 1).

The land topography of Hail is 980-1000 m above sea level. In this study, the wells
were distributed in the study area into a small area as horizontal lines and were named
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, K, L and M and the vertical lines from 1-12 represented the
names of wells by the interaction of the horizontal line with the vertical lines, such as
(A1, A2, ...etc). as shown in Fig. 2.

A total of 193 wells were selected from the study area. The location of wells and
distribution in the study area is rectangular in shape (Fig. 2). The average horizontal
distance between the wells is 1641 m while the average vertical distance is 821 m. The
average depth of wells is 509 m in the selected study area. The groundwater levels
ranged from 61-71 m in 1982, 68-69 m in 1983, 144-168 m in 1997/1998 and 168 and
l86 m in 2011-2012 below the ground surface.

Fig. 1: Location of the study area in Hail region, Saudi Arabia

Fig. 2: Location of wells in the study area (Al-Naeem, 1999)

Fig. Geological layer series of Saq sand aquifer in the Arabian shield
3: of Saudi Arabia (Powers et al., 1966)
The total No. of wells used in the study were 117 representing about two third of the
total number of wells in the whole area.

The study area consist of a sedimentary layer of quaternary age and covers most of the
area. These deposits consist of silt, sand stones and gravel layers with a thickness of 2-
15 m. It is known that sandstone layers of Saq aquifer cover large area of the region.
The Saq sand layer composed of the coastal lower part of the Tabuk layer with a
thickness of 800 m and mostly consists of sandstone. The bottom layer of Tabuk
aquifer is separated from Saq sand aquifer by Alhanadr clay which is impermeable with
approximate thickness of 20 m as given in Fig. 3.

The thickness of Saq sand aquifer in the study area is identical. The aquifer is
horizontal and its eastward slope is about 0.01. The selected location of wells in Saq
aquifer is from a well in location A1 to the well in location G9. The total number of wells
in the study area were 68 and mostly used for agricultural purposes. The groundwater
level was measured through the observation wells. The pumping experiments were
carried to a constant flow rate and recovery of well located in G5 and G7 locations
where the water level drawdown was monitored with time. Then, Theis (1935) method
was applied to determine the aquifer properties namely hydraulic conductivity (k),
coefficient storage(s) and permissible coefficient (T) using Groundwater For Windows
(GWW) computer program. The results of pumping tests were analyzed to estimate the
values of different properties of aquifer. The values of different aquifer properties are
presented in Table 1. Besides, Surfer program was used to draw contour maps for
various aquifer properties.

Data analysis: Data were analyzed by ANOVA and regression techniques for
treatment evaluation at 5% level of significance according to SAS (2001).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Mean values of permeability (T, M2/tor) was 1862.5 and 3475.9 for wells located in G5
and G7, respectively (Table 1). Mean hydraulic conductivity (K, m day-1) was 5.39 and
4.05 for wells in G5 and G7 locations, respectively in the study area. Whereas, the
storage factor (S) was 0.0025 and 0.0029 for wells in G5 and G7 locations,
respectively. These values were determined by well pumping tests in the study area.
The maximum permissible velocity was calculated using Eq. 12 and ranged between
2.1-7.7 m day-1.

Data in Table 2 show the mean maximum permissible flow velocity (MMPFV) for
different locations in the study area. The values of MMPFV came to 5.06, 4.65, 3.48,
4.70, 4.56, 3.92, 5.23, 4.38 and 5.06 m day-1 for J, H, G, F, E, D, C, B and A fields,
respectively in study area. The results indicated the aquifer homogeneity with respect
to water storage characteristics as all these values are very close and the difference
among these seems to be insignificant.

Table 1: Different properties of sub-surface

reservoir calculated by Theis
(1935) method

Table 2: Mean maximum permissible velocities

in the study area (m2 day-1)

Table 3: Mean values of actual flow rate,

maximum permissible flow rate and
residual flow rate for the study sites in
the study area (m3 sec-1)

While looking on the values of velocities, it infers that losses through aquifer cracks is
bare minimum according to Driscoll (1986). It is also expected that under these aquifer
conditions, the rate of scaling and corrosion of well casing is minimum.

A contour map was prepared for the values of maximum permissible velocities for the
wells in the study area (Fig. 4). The contour map shows that local variation in the
maximum permissible velocity ranges between 2.4x10-5 to 8.89x10-5 m sec-1. Based on
the distance between contour lines, values of the maximum velocities for a particular
area in Saq sand aquifer were used for all the agricultural related activities especially
the irrigation in the study area. The actual flow rate of wells ranged between 0.048-
0.049 m3 sec-1. While, the values of Maximum Permissible Flow rate (MPF) calculated
by using Eq. 7 ranged between 0.007-0.017 m3 sec-1.

Table 3 shows the mean values of actual flow rate, maximum permissible flow rate and
residual flow rate of wells in the study area. The ranges of different flow rates (m 3 sec-
) were 0.041-0.085, 0.007-0.017 and 0.048-0.098 for residual flow rate, mean
1

maximum permissible flow rate and mean actual flow rate, respectively for all the
investigated wells in different study sites. These values were calculated to determine
the quantity of groundwater available and to know the change in the volume of this
water with time. In other words, on permanent basis, the quantity of water available
and the actual characteristics of the subsurface Saq aquifer tied with the possible side
effects during pumping.

Data in Fig. 5, 6 and 7 represent the contour maps of distributions of maximum

permissible flow rate, actual flow rate and the residual flow rate, respectively.

Fig. 4: Contour map showing the maximum permissible velocity in the study area
(m day-1)
Fig. Contour map shows the maximum permissible flow rate of wells in the study area (10 -2 m3 sec-
5: 1
)

Fig. 6: Contour map shows the actual flow rate of wells in the study area (10-2 m3 sec-1)

The values of actual flow rates shown in the contour map were estimated based on the
actual field data. It was noticed that the values of actual flow rate measured in the field
were higher than the calculated values of Maximum Permissible Flow rate (MPF).

This point is clear from the range of actual flow rate and the maximum permissible flow
rate when compared with the average flow rate in the study area as given in Table 3. It
can be concluded that actual flow rates of wells in the study area are higher than the
 maximum permissible flow rate by about 90%. Also, the actual flow rates for two wells
is more than the optimal production of wells in the study area. The residual flow rate is
the difference between the actual flow rate and the maximum permissible flow rate.
From the study results, it was found that the residual flow rates of wells tend to change
from one location to another location as shown in Fig. 5 and Table 3.

Fig. 7: Counter map shows the residual flow rate of wells in the study area (10-2 m3 sec-1)

Table 4: Values of mean maximum permissible

drawdown of some wells in the study
area

The results in Figures and Tables explain the values of the residual flow rates with the
maximum quantity of groundwater and justify the maximum permissible flow rate. In
fact, unnecessary consumption of groundwater can be seen from Table 3 and is likely to
affect the aquifer water storage in future. Consequently, this will increase the slope of
the pizometeric water level in future thus making it impossible for the hydraulic
conveyance of the aquifer to recharge the aquifer flow rate in the area. Similar views
were reported by Qahman et al. (2005). Who reported that water problems occur when
excessive pumping at certain individual wells lowers the potentiometric surface locally
and causes up-coning of the inter-face between fresh water and saline water. They
researchers investigated the optimal and sustainable extraction of groundwater from a
coastal aquifer under the threat of seawater intrusion. The physical model is based on
the density-dependent advective-dispersive solute transport model.

The study of the contour maps (Fig. 5, 6 and 7) show that if the counter line is high,
this means that the actual flow rate is high. Therefore, it is easy from the counter maps
to determine the high and low flow rates of wells in the study area which is verified
from the distance between different counter lines.

Lastly data in Fig. 7 show the simulation of counter maps for actual flow rate and the
maximum permissible flow rate of wells in the study area. The intersection of contour
lines for the two maps at any point represents the residual flow rate. The study of a
similar map indicates that if the values of the counter lines are positive, then the actual
flow rate is more than the maximum permissible flow rate of wells in an aquifer.

The above classification for the actual flow rate, the optimum flow rate and the residual
flow rate gives an indication of good administrative process for drawing the counter
map of groundwater pizometric level during the irrigation interval in the irrigated
agriculture project in the study area. In general, the water consumption is less than
recharge in the study area. It is an admitted fact that when water is pumped from a
well, the water stored is consumed around the well resulting in decreasing the
piezometric water level. Above all, data of groundwater piezometric level such as
vertical flow and horizontal flow is required for calculating the capacity of an aquifer.
Because, this data is an important part of input data in developing the mathematical
model in the computer. The mathematical model, so developed, will be used to predict
the effect of the recent pumping flow rates on long-term basis and to draw optimal
plan of future groundwater development.

The maximum permissible water drawdown was calculated from Eq. 10 and presented
in Table 4. Table 4 shows that the mean maximum permissible water drawdown was
4.65 m which is the drawdown required to produce the desired flow rate partially for
possible determining the natural hydraulics of the aquifer. Also, it will further help to
develop and design productive wells. Besides, if the drawdown in the well is greater
than the maximum permissible drawdown, then disturbance occurs in the flow rate of
wells. The tendency of specific capacity of a well is gradual when the increase in the
flow rate is above the Maximum Permissible Flow rate (MPF). Moreover, the
intersection occurs between the effective radius of counters. Data in Fig. 5 shows the
counter map of maximum permissible flow rate. The data in Fig. 5 can help to observe
local variation and to estimate the maximum permissible drawdown in well water at
any desired point in the study area. The study findings agree with those of Qahman et
al. (2009) applied two multi-objective management models in a coastal aquifer to
maximize the total volume of water pumped, minimizing the salt concentration of the
pumped water and controlling the drawdown limits on a part of the aquifer with 9
existing pumping wells located at various depths. The study showed that the optimum
pumping rate is in the range of 26-34% of the total natural replenishment and the
proposed technique is a powerful tool for solving this type of management
problems. Soni and Pujari (2010) analyzed the hydro-chemical data of groundwater
samples of three different limestone mine sites which are in close proximity and covers
a tract along the Gujarat coast of Indian peninsula. They found sea water intrusion in
the coastal aquifer in the study area and recommended measures for sustainable use
of groundwater by the mining companies and other stake holders.

CONCLUSION

A mathematical model was developed consisting of easy and simple steps to formulate
a procedure for aquifer management in dry regions. Since the aquifers represent the
national wealth of Saudi Arabia, therefore this program was designed to manage the
water wells located at irregular distances. The variables for the mathematical computer
program include flow velocity and the maximum permissible drawdown. The developed
program is useful to satisfy the principal variables such as hydraulic conductivity of
aquifer related to each well location, well diameter, distance between wells and the
aquifer thickness. The effective administrative program was executed without using
local continuity equation. The application of this computer program requires actual field
data including the properties and composition of Saq aquifer formation. Overall, the
variables studied were very effective for the establishment of aquifer administrative
program for efficient utilization in agriculture.

RECOMMENDATIONS

In order to apply a simple and effective aquifer management program, the following
points need consideration:

• Monitoring of aquifer water level by using a simple and sophisticated administrative

rules as suggested in the study
• The interaction between the radius of influence of wells must be minimized and
should be less than 5% for introducing aquifer administrative program
• To avoid any problems in the pump filters and the stones around the well casing, the
aquifer velocity must be less than the maximum permissible flow rates
• It is required to modify the actual flow rate and should be equal to the maximum
permissible flow rate as suggested in this study
• Additional requirements such as quantity of water pumped and its actual use must
to be compared or matched for better utilization of aquifer