Clemens Messerschmid

University of Freiburg | Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg · Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources

While groundwater recharge is considered fundamental to hydrogeological insights and basin management and studies on its temporal variability are in great number, much less attention has been paid to its spatial distribution, by comparison. And in ungauged catchments it has rarely been quantified, especially on the catchment scale. For the first t...

While groundwater recharge is considered fundamental to hydrogeological insights and basin management, only relatively little attention has been paid to its spatial distribution. And in ungauged catchments it has rarely been quantified, especially on the catchment scale. For the first time, this study attempts such analysis, in a previously ungauge...

The main objective of this doctoral research is the determination of groundwater recharge and its spatial distribution in a mountainous karst catchment area of the eastern Mediterranean. The basin was previously almost ungauged and it is characterised by very limited data availability and strong obstacles to any observation of the underground proce...

Interview on Gaza water crisis

While groundwater recharge is one of the most prominently covered subjects in hydrogeology, the spatial distribution of recharge has been given relatively little attention, especially in semi-arid, karstic aquifers. Under conditions of highly diverse geology, relief, vegetation and land use, the complexity and variability of spatially distributed h...

Groundwater recharge processes in semi-arid climates are highly sensitive to spatial and temporal variability (event precipitation). However, in previous research, the spatial distribu-tion of recharge has received relatively little attention. This study differentiates recharge ac-cording to the following spatial characteristics: (a) soil type and...

This article advances a critique of the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia's (ESCWA's) representation of the Jordan River Basin, as contained in its recently published Inventory of Shared Water Resources in Western Asia. We argue that ESCWA's representation of the Jordan Basin is marked by serious technical errors and a systematic bias...

Runoff observations with high spatial and temporal resolution before, during and since the Intifada in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, allow for new insights into the feedback between changing social systems and hydrological response under changing land forms. The lack of land control and infrastructure, movement restrictions and tight closure...

This chapter challenges the most enduring myths surrounding access to water in the Israel-Palestine context by tracing the main mechanisms and interests at work shaping water relations, and by contextualizing the conflict over control and access to water resources. It argues that when water is lifted from the purely technical sphere and analysed as...

Climate change (CC) and water is a fascinating discursive terrain as it is both highly visible and becoming increasingly tangible, while at the same time remaining conspicuously fluid, dealing with incremental changes and ‘substantial uncertainties’ in speed, spatial variability, scale, depth, and impacts. This chapter lays out CC implications in t...

Messerschmid starts by comparing conditions in the West Bank, which is rich in groundwater of excellent quality but largely under Israeli control, with conditions in Gaza, which has hardly any appreciable recharge from rain and a water supply that is almost entirely contaminated. The coastal aquifer constitutes the only source of water directly ava...

The occurrence of this shallow aquifer is limited to a small area in the eastern part of the West Bank (Fig. 3.3.1-1). Although this aquifer is of major importance, it has neither been described nor characterized elsewhere. The aim of this study was to develop a detailed hydrogeological understanding of this local aquifer and its significance for t...

The increased attention given to international transboundary aquifers may be nowhere more pressing than on the western bank of the Jordan River. Hydropolitical analysis of six decades of Israeli and Palestinian pumping records reveals how ground water abstraction rates are as asymmetrical as are water allocations. The particular hydrogeology of the...

There is a general notion that "cooperation of any sort" would reduce the conflict and lead to more consensus-driven relations over water, which would in turn bring practical benefits for both sides in practical terms. The concept of hydro-hegemony, however, posits the simultaneous co-existence of coercion and consent (Gramsci) in transboundary wat...

The flow model is created in 2 steps. First a conceptual model assesses stratigraphy, lithofacies and structure of the basin, the distribution, connections and parameters of aquifers and the cell size, boundaries and geometry of the model. In a second step, when the conceptual model is transformed into a numerical model setup, a steady state run is...