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Qatar, Western Asia

Groundwater is Qatar’s main conventional freshwater resource, its cornerstone for agricultural development, and its potential strategic water reserve. We review key literature on Qatar's groundwater resources published over the past four decades (1982–2022) in order to report the current knowledge of the country’s resources, update the understanding of the challenges they face, and recommend research-based pathways for their sustainable management.

There is evidence that Qatar’s groundwater resources have been drastically depleted and qualitatively degraded mainly due to long-term over-exploitation. A longstanding ineffectiveness in addressing certain groundwater challenges such as groundwater over-abstraction and groundwater salinization was highlighted. The unsustainability of groundwater resources in the country …