Ten-year prediction of groundwater level in Karaj plain (Iran) using MODFLOW2005-NWT in MATLAB

The accelerated trend of urbanization as well as industrial development in Karaj can be mentioned as the major reasons for speeding up the exploitation of water resources in this study area, through the recent decades. The increase in industrial, domestic and agricultural water consumptions, as a result of the abovementioned development, has been accompanied by an irregular and wasteful extraction of groundwater resources considering drought in the recent years and reduced precipitation in the Middle East. The above direction has resulted in dire consequences such as unbelievable drop in groundwater level and reduced aquifer storage while several springs and qanats were deserted and dried up. Therefore, an accurate study of groundwater status, reasons for groundwater level drop and consequences besides presenting solutions for conservation and balancing groundwater should be known as the most critical issues for this area, since stepping out of the current situation requires reasonable policies for exploiting from the aquifer. Therefore, by utilizing MATLAB interface in this research, three scenarios entitled optimistic situation, pessimistic situation and continuing current situation were defined to predict groundwater level of Karaj study area until water year of 2023–2024. According to the results, 12.834, 19.089 and 4.906 m water level drops were computed for continuing current situation, pessimistic situation and optimistic situation, respectively.