Abdelghani Boudhar

• PhD
• Professor at Cadi Ayyad University

This study examines the temporal relationships between meteorological and agricultural drought indices using lagged and linear correlations, the Mann–Kendall trend test, and machine learning (random forest – RF and deep neural network – DNN). On a seasonal and annual scale, the results revealed that the resonance of agricultural drought is strongly...

Floods are the most common natural hazard, causing major economic losses and severely affecting people's lives. Therefore, accurately identifying vulnerable areas is crucial for saving lives and resources, particularly in regions with restricted access and insufficient data. The aim of this study was to automate the identification of flood-prone ar...

Severe droughts have affected the irrigated regions of Tadla and Lower Tassaout, Morocco, since 2019, peaking in September 2021. This study integrates Sentinel-2 satellite imagery with machine learning algorithms (MLAs) to quantify drought impacts on fruit tree systems. Three predictor scenarios were tested: M1 (Sentinel-2 bands and indices), M2 (a...

Analysis of the temporal relationship between meteorological drought and hydrological drought is crucial in monitoring water resource availability. This study examined the linear and lagged relationships of the spread of meteorological drought to hydrological drought and their joint effects on low-flow drought variability in the Oum Er-Rbia (OER) w...

Managing water resources in Morocco has always been a difficult task due to the scarcity of ground measurements and the diverse climatic and physical conditions. Over the past decade deep learning have proven to be valuable tools for watershed planning, offering high performance, accuracy, and predictive capabilities. In many Moroccan basins, snowm...

Study regions : The study area encompasses two distinct sub-basins within the High Atlas Mountains: Oukaimeden in the Rheraya and Tichki in the Mgoun Valley. Study focus : The research integrates remote sensing data, particularly the Normalized-Difference Snow Index (NDSI) from the MODIS Sensor, with machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) mod...

Snow is one of the important sources of water in most parts of the world, especially in regions with scarce precipitation, supplying approximately a third of the water needed for agricultural activities, drinking, and underground water sources. Accurate snow-cover information is important for scientific studies, water supply management and various...

Accurate and efficient streamflow simulations are necessary for sustainable water management and conservation in arid and semi-arid contexts. Conceptual hydrological models often underperform in these catchments due to the high climatic variability and data scarcity, leading to unstable parameters and biased results. This study evaluates the stabil...

Streamflow prediction is a key variable for water resources management. It becomes more important in semi-arid regions such as the Tensift river basin in Morocco, where water resources are facing a severe drought and the demand is continuously increasing. The present analysis focuses on evaluating Machine Learning techniques, namely support vector...

Water resources management has always been a challenging task in the Moroccan context where ground measurements are scarce, climatic, and physical conditions are heterogeneous. In snow hydrology, snow depth is a crucial parameter used to estimate the amount of water stored in the snowpack, the timing of snowmelt, and the amount of water that will b...

In semi-arid Mediterranean areas, a significant proportion of the population living downstream depends on water resources from snowmelt and precipitation as their main source of water. Consequently, snow-covered mountain regions can be considered as a vital water tower, providing a steady supply of water, and contributing significantly to streamflo...

Remote sensing technologies provide continuous and detailed observations of various land surface parameters, including snow cover, vegetation, land surface temperature, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration, offering invaluable information at various scales and contexts. One of the major uses is the precise mapping and monitoring of seasonal snow c...

Data-driven methods, such as machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL), play a pivotal role in advancing the field of snow hydrology. These techniques harness the power of algorithms to analyze and interpret vast datasets, allowing researchers to uncover intricate patterns and relationships within the complex processes of snow dynamics. In snow...

In the high Atlas Mountains of Morocco, forecasting discharge is of crucial importance for water resource management but it remains a difficult task due to the scarcity of observations. This study presents meteorological re-analysis data as a promising alternative for feeding hydrological model where observation data are absent. Re-analysis data ar...

Seasonal snow cover provides the majority of freshwater supplies for human society and natural ecosystems especially in semi-arid regions. For water resource managers, precise data regarding the spatiotemporal variability of snow cover and snow phenology is of paramount importance. Owing to the great spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the snowpa...

To address the increasing global demand for food, it is crucial to implement sustainable agricultural practices, which include effective soil management techniques for enhancing productivity and environmental conditions. In this regard, a study was conducted to assess the efficacy of utilizing phenological metrics derived from satellite data in ord...

Wheat is one of Morocco's main agricultural commodities. However, its production is strongly influenced by climate change, especially in Morocco's arid and semi-arid zones, so a spatio-temporal wheat yield monitoring system is needed to support agricultural policies and plan imports. The aim of this research project is to test the contribution of s...

The planning and management of groundwater in the absence of in situ climate data is a delicate task, particularly in arid regions where this resource is crucial for drinking water supplies and irrigation. Here the motivation is to evaluate the role of remote sensing data and Input feature selection method in the Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) neura...

In the context of water scarcity, the strong spatiotemporal fluctuation of rainfall combined with the sparsity of the rain gauge (RG) measurement networks, particularly over the mountainous regions, constitute real constraints for water resources management. In recent decades, several satellite-based rainfall estimates have become available. These...

Water resources, in several countries around the world, are facing challenges and issues related to climate change, population growth, urban expansion, and industrial and agricultural activities. In the last decade, machine learning and deep learning have emerged as a promising tool for water resources and river basins planning process due to their...

Daily hydrological modelling is among the most challenging tasks in water resource management, particularly in terms of streamflow prediction in semi-arid areas. Various methods were applied in order to deal with this complex phenomenon, but recently data-driven models have taken a better space, given their ability to solve prediction problems in t...

The Mediterranean Region is presumed to be one of the locations where climate change will have the most effect. This impacts natural resources and increases the extent and severity of natural disasters, in general, and soil water erosion in particular. The focus of this research was to assess how climate change might affect the rate of soil erosion...

Mapping seasonal snow cover dynamics provides essential information to predict snowmelt during spring and early summer. Such information is vital for water supply management and regulation by national stakeholders. Recent advances in remote sensing have made it possible to reliably estimate and quantify the spatial and temporal variability of snow...

Water resources management has always been a challenging task in the Moroccan context where ground measurements are scarce and climatic and physical conditions are very heterogeneous. In the last decade, machine learning and deep learning have emerged as a promising tool for developing watershed planning process due to their high-performance, accur...

Mapping seasonal snow cover dynamics provide essential information to predict snowmelt during spring and early summer. Such information is vital for water supply management and regulation by national stakeholders. Recent advances in remote sensing have made it possible to reliably estimate and quantify the spatial and temporal variability of snow c...

The Atlas Mountains cover a large area in the Moroccan territory, with an extent of about 800 km in length and 60 km in large, including various summits above 3000 m of altitude. From these high areas originate the main rivers that supply an important amount of surface water for domestic, agricultural, and industrial use, and it also significantly...

Study region Morocco, Northwestern Africa. Study focus Since April 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission have opened new pathways for hydrologists to monitor the changes in terrestrial total water storage (TWS). Here, the Center for Space Research (CSR), Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL...

Study region Atlas Mountains located in Morocco. Study focus Mountainous regions constitute an area of water production, while water is used in downstream plains. In Central Morocco, the Atlas Mountains represent the most important water supply in the country. The solid part of precipitation forms seasonal snowpack. Snowmelt is important for the w...

Hydrological process modelling consistency is associated with long available gauged data and reliable parameters, which is often limited. Multi-sensors and satellite-based products are considered as an alternative, especially dealing with ungauged basins. In this study, a HEC-HMS hydrological model is used to test two rainfall dataset reliability (...

This study aims to simulate the snowpack evolution based on ERA5 reanalysis dataset, to overcome the problem of the scarcity or the absence of automatic weather stations (AWS) in mountainous regions. Indeed, in Morocco, the lack of hydrological studies is mainly due to the difficulty to install AWS because of logistics constraints. More, it is hard...

The agricultural sector plays a major role in the socio-economic development of several countries around the world, including African countries. Advances induced by digital innovation have positively impacted this sector and could have a considerable impact by reducing the risk of food insecurity. In this chapter, applied research experiences condu...

Mediterranean countries are strongly affected by reduced surface water resources. This study aims to assess the climate change impacts on runoff supply to the Bin El Ouidane dam in Morocco, the largest in terms of hydropower production. A water balance model coupled with a stochastic calibration method to provide confidence intervals on simulated d...

Many challenges prevail in cropland mapping over large areas, including dealing with massive volumes of datasets and computing capabilities. Accordingly, new opportunities have been opened at a breakneck pace with the launch of new satellites, the continuous improvements in data retrieval technology, and the upsurge of cloud computing solutions suc...

The spatio-temporal distribution of snow cover metrics in a mountainous area is mainly related to the climatic conditions as well as to the prevailing morphological conditions. The present study aimed to investigate the altitudinal sensitivity of snow cover metrics using the MODIS Terra snow cover product (MOD10A1 v5). Annual snow metrics, includin...

Estimating snowmelt in semi-arid mountain ranges is an important but challenging task, due to the large spatial variability of the snow cover and scarcity of field observations. Adding solar radiation as snowmelt predictor within empirical snow models is often done to account for topographically induced variations in melt rates. This study examines...

In many Mediterranean countries, climate change issues, namely the scarcity of water resources, are essential for overcoming the obstacles to sustainable food production. In Morocco, cereal growing is a strategic sector that contributes significantly to food security. In order to improve socio-economic conditions in rural areas, the purpose of this...

Melt water runoff from seasonal snow in the High Atlas range is an essential water resource in Morocco. However, there are only few meteorological stations in the high elevation areas and therefore it is challenging to estimate the distribution of snow water equivalent (SWE) based only on in situ measurements. In this work we assessed the performan...

Crop type mapping provides essential information to control and make decisions related to agricultural practices and their regulations. To map crop types accurately, it is important to capture their phenological stages and fine spatial details, especially in a temporally and spatially heterogeneous landscape. The data availability of new generation...

Changing land use patterns is of great importance in environmental studies and critical for land use management decision making over farming systems in arid and semi-arid regions. Unfortunately, ground data scarcity or inadequacy in many regions can cause large uncertainties in the characterization of phenological changes in arid and semi-arid regi...

The availability of concurrently high spatiotemporal resolution remote sensing data is highly desirable as they represent a key element for effective monitoring in various environmental applications. However, due to the tradeoff between the spatial resolution and acquisition frequency of current satellites, such data are still lacking. Many studies...

During the last few decades, the frequency of drought has significantly increased in Morocco especially for arid and semi-arid regions, leading to a rising of several environmental and economic issues. In this work, we analyse the spatial and temporal relationship between vegetation activity and drought severity at different moments of the year, ac...

Remote sensing offers spatially explicit and temporally continuous observational data of various land surface parameters such as vegetation index, land surface temperature, soil moisture, leaf area index, and evapotranspiration, which can be widely leveraged for various applications at different scales and contexts. One of the main applications is...

This research article comprises the calculation of the National Sanitation Foundation-water quality index (NSF-WQI) values for the El Abid River (Morocco) based on twelve physic-chemical and pollution parameters. Then, it defines a new simplified index WQI min based on parameters that are easy to measure in the laboratory or in the field. This simp...

Hydrological models, with different levels of complexity, have become inherent tools in water resource management. Conceptual models with low input data requirements are preferred for streamflow modeling, particularly in poorly gauged watersheds. However, the inadequacy of model structures in the hydrologic regime of a given watershed can lead to u...

This study aims to provide accurate information about changes in agricultural systems (AS) using phenological metrics derived from the NDVI time series. Use of such information could help land managers optimize land use choices and monitor the status of agricultural lands, under a variety of environmental and socioeconomic conditions. For this purp...

Since the dawn of civilization, the Western Mediterranean region has been a unique path for encounters and exchanges. The stability of the general conditions prevailing in its surrounding was crucial to ensure this vital link between north and south and east and west. However, any imbalance would be the precursor of a harmful domino effect to these...

Science is the seed of a decent life, with which we sow hope in the present and which we irrigate with the perfecting of good deeds. It is even crucial in the Mediterranean southern frontiers where the cultural erosion dissolves the structure of a society abandoned by the arms and brains of its youth. Soil-water-vegetation crisis should not be unde...

In this study, the potential of phenological indicators derived from Sentinel-2A (S2) time series were evaluated to explore the key variables that allow identifying both cropland and crop types. Based on the derived S2 phenological metrics and fitted vegetation indices (VI), ten feature sets were developed and assessed to discriminate different cro...

Precipitation and surface runoff vary strongly in space and time across Morocco. The country’s water management is primarily governed at the basin level, following a decentralized approach. However, in some cases, water is shared between basins, which increases the complexity and the potential for conflicts. The current study, conducted at Oum Er R...

Despite the importance of wheat production, it does not fully meet the population's needs and the wheat producers denounce reduced margins. Considering its impact on the socio-economic conditions in rural areas, risk of losses in wheat production value has been analyzed at the level of 34 provinces, representing 70% of the total wheat cropping area...

Water supply for the arid irrigated plains in Morocco depends largely on the upper mountainous basins where significant amounts of precipitation fall as snow. In the Oum Er-Rbia River Basin (OER), snow covers the highest elevations from November to April. Despite the importance of this component in the hydrological cycle, snowmelt contribution to s...

Abstract: In order to improve socio-economic conditions in rural areas, the purpose of this study is to develop models for estimating wheat yield based on the use of agricultural inputs. The emphasis is not only on increasing production, but on economically efficient production that optimises productive resources. Thereby, a cost efficiency analysi...

In order to improve socio-economic conditions in rural areas, the purpose of this study is to develop models for estimating wheat yield based on the use of agricultural inputs. The emphasis is not only on increasing production, but on economically efficient production that optimises productive resources. Thereby, a cost efficiency analysis for whea...

Changes in crop yields may have important implications for food security in Morocco. This study intends to develop an explicit model based solely on phenological parameters derived from Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)/NDVI data to monitor wheat grain yield. The developed model allows overcoming missing weather, soil and irriga...

Air temperature is an important meteorological variable in many fields of our life. However, the availability of air temperature measurements over large geographic areas is often limited by the weather stations spatial distribution inadequacy, their low density and difficulties of data quality and collection. In this context, this study consists to...

The use of remote sensing data provides valuable information to ensure sustainable land cover management. In this paper, the potential of phenological metrics data, derived from Sentinel-2A (S2) and Landsat 8 (L8) NDVI time series, was evaluated using Random Forest (RF) classification to identify and map various crop classes over two irrigated peri...

Managers and policy makers demand information on agriculture dynamics and distribution for the establishment of plans and strategies. For this purpose, the use of remote sensing data constitute an essential key to follow-up the agricultural systems dynamics. The aim of this study is to define a method based on fitted Normalized Difference Vegetatio...

In many Mediterranean countries, climate change issues, including the scarcity of water resources, are essential for overcoming the obstacles to sustainable food production. In Morocco, cereal growing is a strategic sector that contribute significantly to food security. In order to improve socioeconomic conditions in rural areas, the purpose of thi...

This research was conducted at the Tadla plain (central Morocco) that covers a total area of 320 000 ha in the center of the Oum Er-Rbia River basin with a semi-arid climate. During this work, a survey of a hundred farmers was carried out in 2016 in the study area. Based on the collected data, stepwise regression technique was used to develop a new...

The monitoring of drought statewide is a difficult issue especially when the national network of meteorological stations is sparse or do not cover the entire country. In this paper, rainfall satellite estimates derived from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) product have been used to evaluate the ability of remote sensing data to study the...

The present study aimed to propose an operational approach for estimating surface soil moisture from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data by considering diverse environmental variables such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), land surface temperature (Ts), evapotranspiration, topographic parameters (elevation and...

To understand changes in agricultural systems, it is necessary to monitor vegetation dynamics based on the spatio-temporal characterization of phenological parameters. The purpose of this study is to identify the main agricultural systems using a phenology-based classification method in a semi-arid context. Phenological metrics were derived from No...

La température de l'air et les précipitations sont deux variables météorologiques clés dans notre vie quotidienne. Elles sont très importantes dans plusieurs domaines, notamment dans la surveillance de l'environnement, les études sur les changements climatiques, la gestion du territoire et la prédiction des rendements des cultures. En agronomie, la...

Le climat joue un rôle essentiel dans l'évolution de tous les écosystèmes. Dans le domaine agricole par exemple, la relation entre le climat et les cultures est évidente et chaque plante a ses propres exigences vis-à-vis du climat au sein duquel elle se développe. Les données climatiques sont mesurées par des instruments spécifiques installés au ni...

In a context of water scarcity in Morocco, the proper management of water resources is becoming a national priority. However, the strong spatiotemporal fluctuation of rainfall, considered as the first source of surface water intakes, complicates attempts to work on such a long-term purpose. In this work, we aim to provide an analysis of rainfall va...

The objective of this study was to use SAR (sensitivity of Synthetic Aperture Radar) data to detect the supply of irrigation water during the anthesis and grain-filling phenological stages of wheat in the irrigated Tadla perimeter of Morocco. Backscattering coefficients were derived from four ERS-1 (European Remote-Sensing Satellite-1) images acqui...

Irrigated agriculture is an important strategic sector for Morocco, contributing to food security and employment. Nowadays, irrigation scheme managers shall ensure that water is optimally used. The main objective was to support the irrigation monitoring and management of wheat in the irrigated perimeter using optical remote sensing and crop modelin...

The objective of this study was to use SAR (sensitivity of Synthetic Aperture Radar) data to detect the supply of irrigation water during the anthesis and grain-filling phenological stages of wheat in the irrigated Tadla perimeter of Morocco. Backscattering coefficients were derived from four ERS-1 (European Remote-Sensing Satellite-1) images acqui...

L’objectif de ce papier est de proposer et implémenter une procédure de classification d’images satellitaires optique et radar pour la cartographie des cultures, notamment la production d’une carte d’agrumes. 7 classes de cultures ont été considérées (les jeunes agrumes, les agrumes adultes, les vieux agrumes, les autres plantations, les céréales,...

Chapter 8 Support irrigation water management of cereals using optical remote sensing and modeling in a semi-arid region Tarik BENABDELOUAHAB, Hayat Lionboui, rachid hadria, Riad Balaghi, Abdelghani Boudhar, Bernard Tychon Irrigated agriculture is an important strategic sector for Morocco, contributing to food security and employment. Nowadays, irr...

Monitoring water quality in large dams is becoming a necessity for protecting stored water from various forms of pollution. This process requires analysis of several samples on a weekly or monthly basis. Our study aims to determine the relationship between water quality parameters (WQP) and digital data from the Sentinel-2 satellite to estimate and...

Four models of increasing complexity were tested and compared to simulate snow water equivalent at the local scale in the Moroccan High Atlas range. A classical temperature-index model (TI) and three enhanced temperature index models that respectively include the potential clear-sky direct radiation (HTI), the incoming solar radiation (ETI-A) and n...

Surface soil moisture content (SSMC) monitoring constitutes an important parameter to estimate crop water requirements, especially in arid and semi-arid areas. Remote sensing became a useful tool for estimating SSMC. Two approaches were applied for monitoring the SSMC during the 2013/14 cropping season in the irrigated perimeter of Tadla (Morocco)...

The study of the intrinsic vulnerability of groundwater resources to pollution is an effective tool to control their quality degradation and contribute to their protection. It is used to delimit the vulnerable zones which do not withstand a large flow of pollutants introduced from the soil surface. Three methods of assessing the intrinsic vulnerabi...

Le débit des rivières et la recharge des nappes dans la région de Marrakech sont étroitement liés à la dynamique hydrologique dans le Haut-Atlas. Pour anticiper les effets du changement climatique dans cette région où la demande en eau est croissante, il est essentiel de mieux connaitre la contribution respective de la fonte de la neige et des plui...

The semi-arid to arid Moroccan basins are exposed to erratic rainfall conditions and recurring drought situations. Regionally, water is management by the according Basin Agencies. In case of severe drought events water can be shared between basins, as one option for drought mitigation. However, in-situ data is scarce and locally governed, which com...

The semi-arid to arid Moroccan basins are exposed to erratic rainfall conditions and recurring drought situations. Regionally, water is management by the according Basin Agencies. In case of severe drought events water can be shared between basins, as one option for drought mitigation. However, in-situ data is scarce and locally governed, which com...

River flow and groundwater recharge in the Marrakech region are closely linked to the hydrological dynamics in the High Atlas Mountains. To anticipate the effects of climate change in this area where the pressure on water resources is increasing, it is essential to quantify the contribution of snowmelt and rainfall to runoff. This study aims to mod...

In this study we quantified the sensitivity of snow to climate warming in selected mountain sites having a Mediterranean climate, including the Pyrenees in Spain and Andorra, the Sierra Nevada in Spain and California (USA), the Atlas in Morocco, and the Andes in Chile. Meteorological observations from high elevations were used to simulate the snow...

In arid and semi-arid areas, rainfall is often characterized by a strong spatial and temporal variability. These environmental factors, combined with the sparsity of the measurement networks in developing countries, constitute real constraints for water resources management. In recent years, several spatial rainfall measurement sources have become...

In recent years, the quality of groundwater has deteriorated in several regions of Morocco due to many factors. The main objective of this work is to determine the vulnerability of the water table of the Beni Amir to any form of pollutant introduced from the surface by applying the GOD method (Groundwater occurrence, Overall aquifer class and Depth...

The aim of this study is to determine the level of vulnerability of Beni Amir aquifer (Morocco) to contaminants. We apply the modified DRASTIC method coupled with a Geographic Information System to characterize the vulnerability of aquifers to pollution. The modified DRASTIC method (SINAN et al., 2000) is a method based on different parameters: dep...

Snowpack significantly contributes to water resources in North Africa. The objective of this work was to analyze the impact of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on rainfall and temperature in Morocco at a sub-seasonal scale and to evaluate, for the first time, linkages between the NAO and snow cover area (SCA) derived from remote sensing observa...

Fresh water is the condition of all life on Earth for its vital role in the survival of living beings and in the social, economic and technological development. The Groundwater, as the surface water, is increasingly threatened by agricultural and industrial pollution. In this respect, the groundwater vulnerability assessment to pollution is a very...