Main obstacle to development in the dry areas in Central Syria is the scarce and erratic rainfall. Water resources therefore run short in meeting the demand. Water harvesting has shown to be an appropriate means to garantee the sustainability of water resources designed for use in agricultural production and drinking water supply. Scope of the study is the determination of appropriate sites and techniques for water harvesting in Central Syria. Different parameters, such as rainfall, topography,

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... land use and cover, soil and vegetation cover are important to runoff generation in semi-arid areas. Rainfall characteristics were evaluated by modern interpolation techniques such as kriging according to daily records of stations within the research area. Vegetation cover within the rangeland of Central Syria is highly depleted due to overexploitation by grazing. Infrastructure and accessibility of the research area is low. Remote sensing is therefore an appropriate tool to determine land cover and land use for vast areas. Landsat TM 5 data were analyzed using scenes of four dates, two recorded within the rainy season and two during the dry period. The research was focussed on an area of about 19,200 km². Land use and cover were classified by analysis of the satellite data according to the concept of Maximum Likelihood Classifier using ERDASImagine. Soil moisture could be partly analyzed by Tasseled CAP transformation. A Digital Terrain Model was created according to the interpolation of digitized contour lines of maps of the scale 1:100 000. All the different data sets including soil data are analyzed within the geographical information system using ArcView GIS. The runoff potential was analyzed by two methods: the US Soil Conservation Service (SCS) method and the indexing method. Since the indexing method allows to consider all the determinants this method has advantages compared to the SCS method. The process to decide finally on suitable sites for a water harvesting techni [...]