Impact of climate change on groundwater recharge in a small catchment in the Black Forest, Germany

Abstract

Temporal and spatial changes of the hydrological cycle are the consequences of climate variations. In addition to changes in surface runoff with possible floods and droughts, climate variations may affect groundwater through alteration of groundwater recharge with consequences for future water management. This study investigates the impact of climate change, according to the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) A1B, A2 and B1, on groundwater recharge in the catchment area of a fissured aquifer in the Black Forest, Germany, which has sparse groundwater data. The study uses a water-balance model considering a conceptual approach for groundwatersurface water exchange. River discharge data are used for model calibration and validation. The results show temporal and spatial changes in groundwater recharge. Groundwater recharge is progressively reduced for summer during the twenty-first century. The annual sum of groundwater recharge is affected negatively for scenarios A1B and A2. On average, groundwater recharge during the twenty-first century is reduced mainly for the lower parts of the valley and increased for the upper parts of the valley and the crests. The reduced storage of water as snow during winter due to projected higher air temperatures causes an important relative increase in rainfall and, therefore, higher groundwater recharge and river discharge.

Paired Stream-Air Temperature Measurements Reveal Fine-Scale Thermal Heterogeneity Within Headwater Brook Trout Stream Networks

“…Groundwater temperatures approximate mean annual air temperatures (Power et al ., ), and this is why a 1 °C increase in air temperature was translated into a stream temperature increase of 1 °C in many studies (Meisner, ; Rahel et al ., ; Flebbe et al ., ; Rieman et al ., ; Williams et al ., ). However, the magnitude and speed of groundwater temperature change depends upon volume (Gunawardhana et al ., ; Neukum and Azzam, ) and depth (Taylor and Stefan, ; Deitchman and Loheide, ; Gunawardhana and Kazama, ) of groundwater at the local scale. Importantly, spatial variability in resiliency of groundwater temperature in response to air temperature is the critical missing piece to assess climate change impacts on headwater stream fish accurately.…”

Balancing trade-offs between ecosystem services in Germany’s forests under climate change

“…carbon storage and sequestration, habitat conservation, and timber production. Additionally we selected nitrogen leaching and percolation water as indicators for the ecosystem services water quality and quantity, which have been shown to be sensitive to both climate (Neukum andAzzam 2012, Wegehenkel andKersebaum 2009) and management (Guillemot et al 2015, Simonin et al 2007. In our study, the selection process of the modelbased indicators was in line with general requirements for such indicators: transparent, quantitative and scalable (Villa et al 2014).…”

Climate change impacts and adaptation in forest management: a review

“…However, most of these have been undertaken at small catchment scale (Mahat and Anderson 2013;Neukum and Azzam 2012;Zhou et al 2011) with few basin-scale assessments (van Dijk and Keenan 2007). However, the effects of climate and forest cover change on hydrology are complicated.…”