Evaluation of Groundwater Quality and Suitability for Irrigation Purposes and Human Consumption in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Studying groundwater quality is crucial for ensuring its safety because it is widely used for drinking and for domestic, agricultural, and industrial purposes. Owing to the lack of surface water in the Tabuk area of Saudi Arabia, here groundwater wells are one of the primary sources of water for drinking, agriculture, and industry. Groundwater quality is determined by the aquifer characteristics of the regional geology, and it is extensively influenced by both natural and anthropogenic activities. To understand the geochemical evolution and assess the suitability of groundwater for irrigation, major ion geochemistry was utilized to characterize the chemical composition of groundwater in the Tabuk area, which is considered a semiarid plateau region. Depending on its mineral composition, irrigation water’s quality reflects how it affects plants and soil. In total, 80 groundwater samples have been collected and analyzed in laboratory for major cations and anions. Temperature, alkalinity (ALK), pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), electric conductivity (EC), total hardness (TH), oxidation reduction potential (ORP), and cation and anion concentrations were measured. Water chemistry classification was carried out by using a Piper diagram and a Gibbs diagram. In the current study, statistical methods, combined with geochemical modeling and conventional plots, have been used to investigate groundwater and related geochemical processes in the Tabuk area of Saudi Arabia. Applications and calculations of hydrogeochemical parameters, specifically SAR, RSC, PI, CR, MH, Na%, KR, and HI, showed that 92.5% of the collected groundwater well samples are suitable for drinking and irrigation purposes after treatment processes.