Droughts are a major problem in Iraq especially in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands where they are frequent and causes a great deal of suffering and loss. Drought monitoring and forecasting requires extensive climate and meteorological data which is usually largely missing in developing countries or not available in the required spatial and temporal resolutions. In this study, the drought categories were defined for the years 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2017 using the TRMM data to map the spatiotemporal meteorological drought, and the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) to analyze the meteorological drought at 11 stations located in Western Iraq. The SPI analyses were performed on 12-month datasets for five years. The results showed that the northeast region has the higher rainfall indices and the southwest region has the lowest rainfall. An analysis of the drought and rain conditions showed that the quantity of extreme drought events was higher than that expected in the study area, especially in the south and southwest areas. Therefore, an alternate classification is proposed to describe the drought, which spatially classifies the drought type as mild, moderate, severe and extreme. In conclusion, the integration between TRMM data SPI data proved to be an effective tool to map the spatial distribution and drought assessment in the study area.

Groundwater is among the most important resources of water supply of the worldwide population. The objective of this research is to select the most suitable drilling location of new groundwater wells, with a decision-making tool using geographic information system (GIS). The optimum location was evaluated based on the hydro-geoelectrical parameter derived from vertical electrical sounding (VES) including longitudinal conductance, aquifer thickness, aquifer resistivity, transmissivity, formation factor, and porosity. The analysis of the VES data revealed that the porosity values range from 1.8 to 21%, the formation factor values vary between 0.0355 and 0.14, the transmissivity values range from 3.4 to 6 m²/day, the longitudinal conductance values vary from 3 to 4.6 Ω⁻¹, the aquifer thickness values range from 4.1 to 8.5 m, the aquifer resistivity varies between 0.7 and 40 Ω m. Hydro-geoelectrical data were integrated into GIS to precisely determine the best location for groundwater wells. Fuzzy liner membership was used to standardize the criteria layers; then, these layers were combined using fuzzy gamma overlay to produce the suitability map. The study area was classified into four classes: excluded, low suitability, moderate suitability, and high suitability. It is recommended that this method should be adopted by different governmental agencies involved in water resources management in Nigeria.

The objective of this research is to select the most suitable drilling location of new groundwater exploration wells, with a decision-making tool from Geographic Information System (GIS). The optimum location will be evaluated base on the hydro-geoelectrical parameter derived from Vertical Electrical Sound (VES) including Longitudinal Conductance, the thickness of the aquifer, the apparent resistivity and Transmissivity. From the Geo-electrical method (VES) the finds shows that the aquifers in the study area have Apparent Resistivity ranging from 0.32 to 40.24 Ωm, Thickness between 0.21 m to 15.06 m, Longitudinal Conductance ranging from 0.006 to 10.246Ω-1 and Transmissivity ranging from 0.14 to 10.38m2/day. Hydro-geoelectrical data were integrated into GIS to precisely determine the best location for groundwater borehole. Finally, the study location was classified into three classes; not suitable, moderately suitable and highly suitability with respect to the input factors using the Fuzzy overly combing method. It’s evident that the middle part of the area in study represents the optimum location for the drilling of groundwater boreholes.

In this study, GIS and image processing techniques were employed to identify the morphological features and analyzing the basin properties of Diyala river. GIS hydrology tools were used for watershed delineation and analysis of the morphological features based on Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) DEM data. Moreover, this study deals with the geometric characteristic, where it evaluates the sub-basins morphometric parameters such as area, perimeter, stream frequency, maximum width and length, drainage density and stream orders. The results led to delineate five sub-basins with five stream orders, the drainage density of these sub-basins are ringing between 0.47 to 0.99 km/km2. Stream orders were calculated, where the number of streams is 41494 with a length 7040.44 km as first order, 10747 with a length 3540.58 km as second-order, 59 with a total length 622.55 km as third order, 13 with a total length 454.98 km as fourth-order streams, and 5 with a total length 340.7 km as fifth order. The stream length reaches the maximum in the first-order, and it decreases with increasing the stream order. This result could be valuable for regional planners and overall policy-makers for agricultural/ water management strategies.