ORIGINAL ARTICLE Groundwater modeling as a precursor tool for water resources sustainability in Khatt area, UAE Mohamed M. Mohamed 1 • Nada Al-Suwaidi 2 • Abdelazim Ebraheem 3 • Mohammed Al Mulla 3 Received: 22 April 2015 / Accepted: 5 November 2015 / Published online: 24 February 2016 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 Abstract Groundwater is the main source of irrigation in the Khatt area located in the northeastern part of the United Arab Emirates. The excess pumping of groundwater for irrigation during the last three decades has decreased the average groundwater flow by one tenth. Water resources in the region are of strategic national importance. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to establish an accurate groundwater budget model that will enable assessment of water availability in the Khatt Basin. The well-known software MODFLOW is used to simulate groundwater in the study area. Several simulations for different periods were conducted including a steady state calibration simu- lation for 1969, a transient calibration simulation from 1970 to 1986, and a verification simulation that represents current conditions. Additionally, future scenarios were simulated till 2035. Results show that the current extraction rates are not sustainable and need to be reduced by at least 25 % to mitigate the present severe groundwater depletion and to achieve sustainable development in the area. Keywords Groundwater modeling Á Water sustainability Á Irrigation Á Khatt area, UAE Introduction Groundwater is the main source of freshwater in arid regions. Arid regions are known for low rainfall, high potential evapotranspiration, and high intensity/low fre- quency seasonal rainfall events. The dramatic increase of population and the rapid development in the agricultural and industrial sectors (Ismael 1995) had put a huge stress on this already scarce natural resource (Mohamed and Almualla 2010a, b). The average annual groundwater recharge is about 4875 M m 3 . The contribution of groundwater to the total water usage in the region is more than 75 % (Dawoud 2005). Groundwater resources in United Arab Emirates (UAE) can be divided into renewable (shallow aquifers) and non- renewable resources (deep aquifers) (Elmahdy and Mohamed 2012, 2013a, b). The renewable water resour- ces occur mostly in shallow alluvial aquifers formed by percolating rainfall (Sherif et al. 2011a, b). On the other hand, the non-renewable deep groundwater aquifers were formed during two ancient wet periods (6000–9000 and 25,000–30,000 years ago) (Wood and Imes 1995; Elmahdy and Mohamed 2015). The recharge of shallow aquifers depends mainly on rainfall events and surface runoff, and thus may vary considerably from year to year. Due to the high evaporation rate and surface water runoff in mountains areas, only 10–14 % of the total precipita- tion percolates to recharge the shallow groundwater aquifers in UAE (ESCWA 2003). Yet, many groundwater aquifers in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are being mined in an uncontrolled and unplanned manner (Mohamed et al. 2010a, b). Unplanned groundwater mining erodes the economic and social sustainability of the communities that depend on the depleting storage (Dawoud 2005). & Mohamed M. Mohamed m.mohamed@uaeu.ac.ae 1 Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, College of Engineering, UAE University, P.O. Box: 15551, Al Ain, UAE 2 Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), Dubai, UAE 3 Water Resources Division, Ministry of Environment and Water, P.O. Box: 1509, Dubai, UAE 123 Environ Earth Sci (2016) 75:400 DOI 10.1007/s12665-016-5261-x