Groundwater in Armenia's Ararat Basin: A USGS–USAID Study

This groundwater-fed lake in the Ararat Basin is about 8 feet (2 meters) lower than a decade earlier, and the stream that flowed from it is dry. USGS.

In 2016 the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) began helping Armenia build science-based groundwater tools and expertise for the Ararat Basin, where heavy pumping has been draining an artesian aquifer.

The basin and its aquifer

• Where: south of the capital, Yerevan, along the border with Turkey.
• Arid but fertile: Armenia's driest region, with about 10 inches of rain a year — yet its largest farming and fish-farming zone, thanks to high-quality water from wells into the artesian aquifer beneath it. The water is drinkable without treatment.
• The aquifer: in Quaternary lava deposits, mostly porous, fractured basalt; 80 percent of the basin's springs rise from these lavas. It is recharged by rain soaking in and by streams losing water, especially in the uplands.

The problem

• Fish farms: since about 2000, pumping has grown with aquaculture of trout, sturgeon and other cold-water fish, on top of municipal, irrigation, energy and industrial use.
• Wells running dry: many once-flowing wells have stopped or slowed. Wells supplying drinking and irrigation water to 31 communities no longer flow, and the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant at Metsamor can no longer meet its water needs from springs.
• Wasted water: many abandoned wells still spill water onto the ground — a hazard that keeps depleting the aquifer.
• Shrinking surface water: streamflows and lake levels have dropped.

Sturgeon and a fish farm in the Ararat Basin, raised with water pumped from the artesian aquifer. USGS.

An abandoned well spilling water onto the land surface, November 2015. USGS.

Objectives

1. Characterize the basin's hydrogeologic framework and conditions, from geologic maps, satellite imagery, well records and water levels gathered by Armenian partners.
2. Summarize groundwater resources and help design a monitoring network, filling critical data gaps.
3. Train Armenian professionals to understand and manage groundwater — and, with USAID, outline a plan for sustainable use.

The work is part of USAID/Armenia's Advanced Science and Partnerships for Integrated Resource Development (ASPIRED) program, with the Government of Armenia, its Hydrogeological Monitoring Center, and USAID's Global Development Lab and GeoCenter; tools are meant for managers such as Armenia's Ministry of Nature Protection.

Approach

• Training (February–March 2016, Yerevan): groundwater modeling, well inventory, water-level measurement, well discharge, and water-quality sampling, including stable isotopes and cesium-137 for dating water — in classrooms and at flowing and nonflowing wells and streams. Armenian partners were to collect well status, water levels and field water-quality data in summer 2016.
• A groundwater-flow model: built on a hydrogeologic framework — the aquifer's extent, thickness, depth, water levels, flowing areas, recharge and discharge — to simulate changes such as sealing abandoned wells or drought.
• Satellite radar (InSAR): to check whether the land is subsiding as groundwater is depleted.

Measuring water levels in a nonflowing well near Ararat during field training, March 2, 2016, with Mount Ararat behind. USGS.

The Hrazdan River at Yerevan, where samples were taken for stable isotopes and cesium-137. USGS.

Sources

Based on Building Science-Based Groundwater Tools and Capacity in Armenia for the Ararat Basin, by Janet M. Carter, Joshua F. Valder, Mark T. Anderson, Patrick Meyer and Jo L. Eimers, USGS Fact Sheet 2016–3033, prepared with USAID, U.S. Geological Survey (DOI), citing the Armenian Branch of Mendez England and Associates (2014), Nalbandyan (2012) and Yu and others (2015); a work of the United States government in the public domain. The photographs come from the fact sheet's PDF; its location map, adapted from a contractor's report, is left out.