Karst aquifers and watersheds represent a major source of drinking water around the world. They are also known as complex and often highly vulnerable hydrosystems due to strong surface-groundwater interactions. Improving the understanding of karst functioning is thus a major issue for the efficient management of karst groundwater resources. A comprehensive understanding of the various processes can be achieved only by studying karst systems across a wide range of spatiotemporal scales under different geological, geomorphological, climatic, and soil cover settings. The objective of the French Karst National Observatory Service (SNO KARST) is to supply the international scientific community with appropriate data and tools, with the ambition of (i) facilitating the collection of long-term observations of hydrogeochemical variables in karst, and (ii) promoting knowledge sharing and developing cross-disciplinary research on karst. This paper provides an overview of the monitoring sites and collective achievements, such as the KarstMod modular modeling platform and the PaPRIKa toolbox, of SNO KARST. It also presents the research questions addressed within the framework of this network, along with major research results regarding (i) the hydrological response of karst to climate and anthropogenic changes, (ii) the influence of karst on geochemical balance of watersheds in the critical zone, and (iii) the relationships between the structure and hydrological functioning of karst aquifers and watersheds.Abbreviations: CADI, cellular automata-based deterministic inversion; Ex/Em, excitation/emission; NOM, natural organic matter; SLP, sea level pressure; SNO Karst, the French Karst National Observatory Service.Karstified carbonate formations contain 25% of the world's water resources. They cover a very large extent of the continental surface: 10% of the global continental surface, 30 to 70% of the Mediterranean area, 22% of the land in Europe, and 50% in France (Chen et al., 2017). In carbonate karst hydrosystems, the presence of fractures, conduits, and surface solution features leads to strong surface-subsurface interactions that result in significant water, mass, energy, and contaminant transport within the critical zone. Such heterogeneous systems are highly dynamic, with complex hydrologic, geochemical, and biological processes occurring across a wide range of spatiotemporal scales. As a result, they Core Ideas • SNO KARST is dedicated to the study of karst functioning. • Hydrodynamics and geochemistry are measured at springs and in karst compartments. • Process sampling was set up at nine sites in various climatic contexts.
A new multidisciplinary methodology is developed to determine the structural geometry of hard-rock aquifers. The Plancoët migmatitic basement, chosen as an example for the use of this methodology, is studied both at a regional (300 km 2 ) and a local (4 km 2 ) scale. The regional mapping, based on field mapping of the tectonic structures and the weathered layers, on geostatistics and on aerial photographs and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) analyses, demonstrates the influence of the tectonic structures on the weathering processes. Some geo-electric investigations, added to the first mapping at the local scale, lead to the building of a local geometrical model of the aquifer.Approche multidisciplinaire pour déterminer la géométrie structurale des aquifères de socle.Application à l'aquifère migmatitique de Plancoët (NE Bretagne, W France) Mots-clés. -Aquifère métamorphique, Analyse morphostructurale, Profils d'altération, Prospections électriques, Modèle géomé-trique Résumé. -Nous présentons ici une nouvelle méthode pluridisciplinaire pour déterminer la géométrie structurale des aquifères de socle. Le site migmatitique de Plancoët, choisi comme exemple dans cette étude, est étudié à l'échelle ré-gionale (300 km 2 ) et locale (4 km 2 ). La cartographie régionale, basée sur des observations sur le terrain des structures tectoniques et des horizons d'altération, sur une analyse géostatistique et sur des analyses de photos aériennes et du modèle numérique de terrain (MNT), met en évidence l'influence des structures tectoniques sur les processus d'altération.A l'échelle locale, des prospections géo-électriques ajoutées à la précédente cartographie permettent de construire un modèle géométrique local de l'aquifère.
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