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In the West Bank, the agricultural sector accounts for the majority of water demand in the region. Where irrigated agriculture covers only 12% of the cultivated area of the West Bank it consumes around 65% of the total water resources. Most of the irrigated area of the Jordan Valley is under Majdool date palm trees, with a total number of about 250,000 trees, half of whom are younger than 5 y. Despite using drip irrigation, which is considered efficient and reduces water loss, improvement of the irrigation schedule can still be realized by a tailored management of the water demand of plants. In the Jordan Valley, the most important irrigated agricultural area in the West Bank, over-irrigation of the crops and trees is a common practice that causes the degradation of the groundwater aqui-fer systems. This study aims to use precise irrigation management to balance water demand with irrigation volumes to avoid water spillage. The Hydrus-2D package was used to develop an irrigation schedule for a 5 y date palm old. Model simulations show that farmers can schedule irrigation with less than the recommended volume of 20 m3/tree·y. By applying around 46% of the currently recommended volume, similar production levels could be obtained in terms of yield and biomass. We conclude that using precision irrigation scheduling, the water demand per tree reduces to a recommended rate of about 12.5 m3/tree·y increasing crop water productivity up to 2.63 kg/m3 as opposed to 1.66 kg/m3 with the traditional irrigation schedule. Additionally, less water drains beneath the root zone.

In Massafer Yatta–Hebron Governorate, around 1,400 Palestinian people are herding sheep and goats and live in caves and movable tents without a water network or sewer system. In the winter season rainwater is harvested for drinking purposes and stored in underground cisterns. Yet, spo-radic water quality tests indicated a contamination level of micro-organisms ranging from 20 to 100 Colony Forming Unit (CFU/100 mL). In this area, rife with political conflicts, connection to a piped network seems unsure, at best, and calls for using natural and available resources to filter clean and potable water are justified. This study addresses these social requests by testing the efficiency of Thermo Tolerant Coliform removal (TTC) using bio-sand filters (BSFs) under real conditions in a full factorial design of experiment. The dependent variables are charge volume, age of BSF, the outside temperature, residential time, turbidity, water sources, and free chlorine contents. The inde-pendent variables are volume of BSF and sand grain size. The result shows that the 5 h residence time of water and the media age of more than one month is significant to remove the TTC from drinking water with P-values of 0.0439 and 0.0089, respectively. Water with 500 CFU/100 mL, TTC needs more than 5 h residence time to reduce the TTC below the 10 CFU/100 mL. Turbidity and sources of drinking water did not affect the removal of TCC, yet, using 0.18 mm effective sand grain size was significant in removing TTC. The adoption of a 23 h water residency period was the most important of all operating parameters including the 0.18 mm effective sand size to remove about 99.8% of TTC. This study recommends a BSF that generates more than 20 L in 23 h, and the BSF Schmutzdeke should be replaced every 4 y.