Samir K. M. AlMashharawi

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology | KAUST · Hydrology and Land Observation (HALO) Lab, Water Desalination and Reuse Center

Coastal water flows facilitate important nutrient exchanges between mangroves, seagrasses and coral reefs. However, due to the complex nature of tidal interactions, their spatiotemporal development can be difficult to trace via traditional field instrumentations. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) serve as ideal platforms from which to capture such dy...

Coastal water flows facilitate important nutrient exchanges between mangroves, seagrasses and coral reefs. However, due to the complex nature of tidal interactions, their spatiotemporal development can be difficult to trace via traditional field instrumentations. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) serve as ideal platforms from which to capture such dy...

Excessive evaporative loss of water from the topsoil in arid-land agriculture is compensated via irrigation, which exploits massive freshwater resources. The cumulative effects of decades of unsustainable freshwater consumption in many arid regions are now threatening food-water security. While plastic mulches can reduce evaporation from the topsoi...

Developments in computer vision, such as structure from motion and multiview stereo reconstruction, have enabled a range of photogrammetric applications using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)-based imagery. However, some specific cases still present reconstruction challenges, including survey areas composed of steep, overhanging, or vertical rock for...

The agricultural sector in Saudi Arabia has witnessed rapid growth in both production and area under cultivation over the last few decades. This has prompted some concern over the state and future availability of fossil groundwater resources, which have been used to drive this expansion. Large-scale studies using satellite gravimetric data show a d...

Thermal infrared cameras provide unique information on surface temperature that can benefit a range of environmental, industrial and agricultural applications. However, the use of uncooled thermal cameras for field and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based data collection is often hampered by vignette effects, sensor drift, ambient temperature influe...

Abstract. The agricultural sector in Saudi Arabia has witnessed rapid growth in both production and area under cultivation over the last few decades. This has prompted some concern over the state and future availability of fossil groundwater resources, which have been used to drive this expansion. Large-scale studies using satellite gravimetric dat...

Biomass and yield are important variables used for assessing agricultural production. However, these variables are difficult to estimate for individual plants at the farm scale and may be affected by abiotic stressors such as salinity. In this study, the wild tomato species, Solanum pimpinellifolium, was evaluated through field and UAV-based assess...

With salt stress presenting a major threat to global food production, attention has turned to the identification and breeding of crop cultivars with improved salt tolerance. For instance, some accessions of wild species with higher salt tolerance than commercial varieties are being investigated for their potential to expand food production into mar...

Three sites in the Red Sea were investigated to assess the variability of composition in Holocene sediments of the backreef environment within 0–2 m of water depth. This is important because composition of the sediment is commonly used to estimate water depth in ancient carbonate rocks. The site located at the King Abdullah Economic City (Saudi Ara...

Crop height measured from UAVs fitted with commercially available RGB cameras provide an affordable alternative to retrieve field scale high resolution estimates. The study presents an assessment of between flight reproducibility of Crop Surface Maps (CSM) extracted from Digital Surface Maps (DSM) generated by Structure from Motion (SfM) algorithms...

Salinity stress severely affects plants growth and causes significant yield reductions. It is a common environmental condition existing in arid and semi-arid zones either naturally or because of anthropogenic influences such as irrigation with reclaimed water. To treat salinity stress, and to address water quality variability, it is essential to tr...

An investigation of a sea water reverse osmosis desalination facility located in western Saudi Arabia has shown that aquifer treatment of the raw sea water provides a high degree of removal of natural organic matter (NOM) that causes membrane biofouling. The aquifer is a carbonate system that has a good hydraulic connection to the sea and 14 wells...

Wadi aquifers in Saudi Arabia historically have been recharged primarily by channel loss (infiltration) during floods. Historically, seasonal groundwater levels fluctuated from land surface to about 3 m below the surface. Agricultural irrigation pumping has lowered the water table up to 35 m below the surface. The geology surrounding the fluvial sy...

A component of designing a managed aquifer recharge system in a dune aquifer is the control of diffusive evaporative loss of water which is governed by the physical properties of the sediments and the position of the water table. A critical water table position is the "extinction depth", below which no further loss of water occurs via diffusion. Fi...

2015): Effects of nearshore evaporation rates on the design of seabed gallery intake systems for SWRO facilities located along the Red Sea shoreline of Saudi Arabia, Desalination and Water Treatment,

Low frequency electromagnetic induction (EMI) is becoming a useful tool for soil characterization due to its fast measurement capability and sensitivity to soil moisture and salinity. In this research, a new EMI system (the CMD mini-Explorer) is used for sub-surface characterization of soil salinity in a drip irrigation system via a joint inversion...

The feasibility of using a subsurface intake system for a seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) water treatment plant is based on the site-specific hydrogeologic conditions which control the type of intake design that can be used and the capacity of the intake. Planning for future development of subsurface intake systems requires a careful analysis of th...

It has been suggested that using a deep open-ocean intake would improve feed water quality and would reduce the cost of SWRO water treatment by lessening membrane biofouling potential. The feasibility of developing deep intake systems for large-capacity SWRO plants located on the Red Sea was assessed. A bathymetric survey showed that the continenta...

Analyses of the changes in concentration of algae, bacteria, transparent exopolymer particles (TEP), and the fractions of natural organic matter (NOM) impacts between surface seawater and the discharges of well intake systems were evaluated at seven different seawater reverse osmosis water (SWRO) treatment plants. In nearly all cases, travel of the...

Geological characteristics of the Red Sea coastline of Saudi Arabia were evaluated to assess the technical feasibility of designing and constructing seabed gallery intake systems to provide feed water for seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plants. Five sites were investigated in detail at King Abdullah Economic City, Om Al Misk Island, Je...

One of the most valuable groundwater reserves in Saudi Arabia is the Saq aquifer system (SAS), a thick (400−1200 meters) sandstone unit that extends across 300,000 km2 in Saudi Arabia and neighboring Jordan. Due to its high productivity and high water quality, current pumping and overexploitation of the aquifer has significantly lowered the groundw...

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest producer of desalinated water with about 13% of the global desalination capacity. Most of these desalination plants use the open-ocean intakes to deliver raw seawater to the desalination facility. Recently, some of the private desalination plants have shifted to subsurface intake systems, either wells or g...

The intake system can play a significant role in improving the feed water quality and ultimately influence the performance of downstream components of the seawater reverse osmosis desalination processes. In most cases, open-ocean intakes produce poor feed water quality in terms of the abundance of naturally occurring organic matter, which increases...

Wadi alluvial aquifers located along coastal areas of the Middle East have been assumed to be suitable sources of feed water for seawater reverse osmosis facilities based on high productivity, connectedness to the sea for recharge, and the occurrence of seawater with chemistry similar to that in the adjacent Red Sea. An investigation of the interse...

Use of subsurface intakes for seawater reverse osmosis desalination (SWRO) systems is known to improve raw water quality, reduce use of chemicals, improve operational reliability, and reduce the life cycle cost of desalination. A key issue in planning for the development of a SWRO facility that would potentially use a subsurface intake is the chara...

Spatial and temporal distribution of soil moisture pattern under trickle emitter is a pre-requisite for the design and management of efficient trickle-irrigation system. Wetting front dimensions are usually obtained by direct measurement of soil wetting in field, which is time consuming and provide local information. Furthermore, mathematical model...

Transparent expolymer particles (TEP) are believed to be a key organic compound that leads to membrane biofouling in SWRO systems. The sticky nature, high surface reactivity and micro-gel character of TEP play a major role in a membrane fouling, because deposition on the membrane surface acts as culture media for bacterial growth and as a depositio...

The main limitation of a single basin solar still is its low productivity. There is a strong need to improve the performance and increase the production rate of solar still desalination. In this paper, a single basin solar still is modified and a V-shape cooling chamber is provided at the bottom of the still. The efficiency and productivity is comp...

Raw seawater extraction for desalination plants using wells has been considered as an alternative to open seawater intake use. This intake method is generally believed to deliver better quality feed water and also should reduce environmental impacts and the overall cost of desalination. An investigation was conducted at the Sur Desalination Plant i...

In arid lands, a major contribution to water loss is by soil water evaporation. Desert sand dunes in arid regions are devoid of runoff and have high rates of infiltration and water is commonly stored within them because of the low hydraulic conductivity soils within the underlying desert pavement. In such cases, moisture is confined in the sand dun...

Conventional processes are widely used as pretreatment for reverse osmosis (RO) desalination technology since its development. However, these processes require a large footprint and have some limitation issues such as difficulty to maintain a consistent silt density index, coagulation control at low total suspended solids, and management of higher...