Groundwater drought risk assessment model as a tool to support sustainable water resources management

Abstract

As a result of increasing water deficits, low nutritional safety, and environmental degradation, the need to implement sustainable water usage and improve current water management practices became a priority. The changes in the hydroclimatic regimen towards more intense yet less frequent rainfall that have been observed in recent years increase the risk of drought. This leads to the need to mitigate this risk and to reduce the effects of repeated, consecutive periods of water shortage. The objective of article was to present a method for assessing the risk of occurrence of groundwater drought based on the distributions of extreme values of groundwater levels. This goal was achieved, which was shown on the examples of selected observation points of the groundwater level in the catchment of the Odra River. Based on the obtained results, it was demonstrated that the application of the distributions of extreme groundwater level values to assess the risk of occurrence of groundwater drought is an effective tool that supports sustainable water management. It offers the possibility to assess the risk of groundwater drought, which usually leads to water deficits in the affected areas, in a fast and simple way. The risk calculated in this way may be used to classify the areas in terms of the level of risk of the occurrence of groundwater drought. The method presented in this paper may also be used to assess the influence of various factors, including the methods of catchment management, climate changes, on mitigating the risk of occurrence of groundwater droughts.