The Beka'a Valley

Introduction: The Lebanese Beka’a valley is situated at an average elevation of 900 m between the western Lebanon and eastern Anti-Lebanon mountain ranges. It comprises around 170 km in length, with a varying width between 20 km in the central part and 5 km near the southern tip. Due to intense agricultural activities in the valley, the Beka’a is of vital importance to the country’s economy and food supply. With an estimated 540 000 inhabitants it is home to about 13.6 percent of the Lebanese population.

The main study area of the project lies in the central part of the Beka’a valley. The Zahle area is a densely populated and industrialized region within the plain. Fertile soils and sufficient surface and groundwater resources allow for high agricultural yields. Including the city of Zahle and Berdaouni River in the eastern foothills of the Lebanon mountain chain, the study area further extends to the east across Litani River and towards the calcareous slopes of the Anti-Lebanon Range.

Land-Use & People

Agriculture: The Beka’a is characterized by a strongly developed agricultural exploration with differing land-use patterns. For centuries, the soils in the valley have been cultivated extensively, but four decades ago agriculture was intensified. The Beka’a has become Lebanon’s prime agricultural area, producing around 37 % of all domestic fruits and far more than half of all domestic cereals, industrial crops and vegetab1les.

A broad range of vegetables, potato, wheat and sugar beet can now be found all over valley, while orchards are located mainly in the Zahle, Anjar and Bar Elias districts. In the NE of the valley, table grape is the crop of choice, and vineyards for wine are encountered on the footslopes and near Karaon lake in the south. Potato is the most important cash crop, and although some farmers apply a rotation system (i.e potato-grain), most of the cash crops are grown in monocultures.

With an average farm size of 29.3 du/farm, agricultural holdings in the Beka’a are more than three times larger than farms in other areas of Lebanon (average 9.1 du/farm, excluding the Beka’a). A similar situation can be observed for livestock production. This leads to a relatively homogeneous spatial cropping pattern. Although every fifth Beka’a resident works in the agricultural sector, large numbers of seasonal workers, including migrants from neighbouring Syria, are needed to ensure production.

Settlements are situated at the foot of both the eastern and western mountain ranges. This distribution dates back to the times when the valley bottom was covered by wetlands. With the extension and intensification of cultivation, the marshes were drained and converted into arable land. Since then new settlements have increasingly spread away from the slopes and towards the central part of the valley. This trend has intensified in recent years, with the upgrading and extension of infrastructure and the expansion of urban stretches along the roads (i.e. along the Damascus-Beirut highway and along the road from Chtaura to Baalbek).

However, construction and urbanization was also extended to the unsettled tertiary foot slopes. Although the preservation of fertile soils in the valley bottom is generally welcome, this development may pose a potential hazard to the water supply of the region: the slopes of the mountain ranges are vital for groundwater recharge.

Industrialization has also taken place to a considerable degree: Agricultural primary production is refined into a variety of dairy products, juice, sweets and wine. Chicken farms were installed in the valley and on the lower mountain slopes. Industrial plants with battery, paint, soap and glass manufacture have been established near the villages; in the surroundings pits and quarries supply raw material for construction.

Resources & Hazards

The Beka’a receives an average annual precipitation of 800 mm. In order to assure continuous cropping, agriculture in the Beka’a depends largely on seasonal irrigation during the hot and dry summer months. Various rivers (Litani River and its tributaries Berdaouni, Zepdo, Chtaura and Ghazaiyel) drain the area with a total annual rate of 280 MCM. Situated at the narrow southern end of the Beka’a, a dam forms the Karaon lake with a storage capacity of xx MCM; ambitious plans envision the extension of irrigation through an elaborated channel system distributing water from the dam far northward up to the central Beka’a area. Respective Pilot Projects have already been established.

Irrigation water is currently taken mostly from a deep and productive aquifer located at the valley edges along the foot slopes of the valley. With increasing water scarcity in the summer, however, groundwater abstraction from this aquifer does not meet the farmers demand, and the exploration of additional water sources is intensified:
• irrigation water taken from the rivers
• Groundwater abstraction from a shallow upper aquifer by wells or soil pits

Effluents are discharged directly to the surface waters, due to the lack of treatment plants for domestic and industrial wastewater. There they account for almost the total runoff during summer. Excessive and uncontrolled waste dumping poses an additional threat to the valley’s ecosystem and surface waters. Some of the pumping stations for river water are located in the immediate vicinity of unsecured waste dumps and frequently waste is dumped directly into the rivers.

Polluted irrigation water, in turn, poses not only a risk to the Beka’a’s fertile soils and crops but also to the groundwater resources in the Zahle area. Here, groundwater tables in the valley bottom are generally very shallow and percolation rates high, due to the comparatively high rainfall in the wetter seasons and intense irrigation during the dry summer months. Elevated nitrate contents in surface and shallow groundwater indicate that excessive fertilizers and pollutants may quickly be leached downward into the groundwater bodies.

Domestic water supply of the Beka'a originates mainly from springs and wells along the valley edges, although some minor domestic wells exist in the central part of the valley. Urban expansion and industrial development on the lower mountain slopes constitute a severe threat to these groundwater resources, because the permeable calcareous slopes are vital to groundwater recharge.

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