Assessment of hydrochemical quality of groundwater in Wadi Almawaheb and Qa,a asawad area, Dhamar city (Yemen)

The main objective of this study was to assess! the quality of groundwater for irrigation at Wadi Almawaheb and Qa,a Asawad, in Dhamar city-Yemen, where the study was conducted in May 2016, Thirty Six groundwater samples were collected from different wells of the study area for the physico-chemical analysis. The results revealed that Potential Hydrogen (pH) of groundwater samples ranged from 6.7 to 8.6, the Electrical Conductivity (EC) ranged from 380-6327 μS/cm, the Total Hardness (TH) from 59.88 to 2224 mg.L^-1 and Sodium Adsorption Ratio (SAR) 0.54-7.1. The Water quality was classified according to USDA and FAO systems (Guides). According to USSL 1954, the classes were C2-S1, C2- S2, C3-S1, C4-S1, and C4-S2 with 62%, 3%, 22 %, 8% and 5% of the wells, respectively. Based on FAO 1985, the classes were severing problem, slight-moderate and none problem and according to FAO 1992, they were moderate saline water, primary drainage water and groundwater. However, according to the above mentioned classification systems, there are no risk for SAR to affect soil permeability. A various physicochemical parameters of groundwater have been studied and analyzed by calculating the correlation coefficients and principle component analysis (PCA) between them. A chemical and physical analysis showed that there is a significant difference among the types of used water in some chemical properties. The results revealed that all water samples analyzed were very suitable for irrigation except two samples that have a highly saline which will effect on planted crops.