Implementation and evaluation of different techniques to modify DRASTIC method for groundwater vulnerability assessment: a case study from Bouficha aquifer, Tunisia

Siarkos, Ilias; Arfaoui, Madiha; Tzoraki, Ourania; Zammouri, Mounira; Hamzaoui‐Azaza, Fadoua

doi:10.1007/s11356-023-28625-3

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…In this context, it is notably important to adopt and implement corrective management practices aimed at preventing nitrate contamination caused by the excessive usage of agricultural fertilizers, which also aligns with all relevant European legislation, such as the Nitrates Directive (91/676/EEC), the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC), and the Groundwater Directive (2006/118/EC), as well as with the objectives outlined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and especially those of SDG 6. According to SDG 6, access to safe and affordable drinking water for everyone by 2030 has to be ensured by reducing water pollution, which involves, among other things, the mitigation of groundwater nitrate contamination [26][27][28]. In general, imposing restrictions on the usage of nitrogen-based fertilizers-which is actually translated to reducing fertilizer application rate and thus limiting nitrogen input into the soil and nitrate leaching into groundwater-is a common and effective practice applied in the effort of controlling nitrate contamination in rural areas [8,[29][30][31][32]; apparently, the higher the reduction in the rate of fertilizer application is, the greater the decrease in nitrate contamination levels might be, thus increasing the likelihood of reaching or maintaining compliance with established groundwater quality standards.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Integrated Framework to Assess the Environmental and Economic Impact of Fertilizer Restrictions in a Nitrate-Contaminated Aquifer

Siarkos,

Mallios,

Latinopoulos

2024

Hydrology

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Groundwater nitrate contamination caused by the excessive use of nitrogen-based fertilizers has been widely recognized as an issue of significant concern in numerous rural areas worldwide. To mitigate nitrate contamination, corrective management practices, such as regulations on fertilizer usage, should be implemented. However, these measures often entail economic consequences that impact farmers’ income, and thus should be properly assessed. Within this context, an integrated framework combining the environmental and economic assessment of fertilization restrictions through multi-criteria decision analysis is presented in an effort to efficiently manage groundwater nitrate contamination in rural areas. For this task, various scenarios involving reductions (10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50%) in fertilizer application were investigated, evaluated and ranked in order to determine the most suitable option. The environmental assessment considered occurrences of nitrates in groundwater, with a specific emphasis on nitrate concentrations in water-supply wells, as obtained by a nitrate fate and transport model, while the economic analysis focused on the losses experienced by farmers due to the reduced fertilizer usage. Our case-study implementation showed that a 30% reduction in fertilization is the most appropriate option for the area being studied, highlighting the importance of adopting such an approach when confronted with conflicting outcomes among alternatives.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Integrated Framework to Assess the Environmental and Economic Impact of Fertilizer Restrictions in a Nitrate-Contaminated Aquifer

Siarkos,

Mallios,

Latinopoulos

2024

Hydrology

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“…Thus, several modified DRASTIC models were proposed in the literature discourse. To exemplify, many scholars coupled the DRASTIC method with MCDA algorithms, notably the AHP (Neshat et al 2014a ; Jhariya et al 2019 ; Arshad et al 2020 ; Bera et al 2022 ), as well as statistical methods (Bonfanti et al 2016 ; Ncibi et al 2020 ; Siarkos et al 2023 ). Moreover, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms such as the artificial neural networks (ANN) (Bordbar et al 2022 ; Smida et al 2023 ), convolutional neural networks (CNN) (Dasgupta et al 2024 ), support vector machines (SVM) (Ijlil et al 2022 ), and random forests (RF) (Karimzadeh Motlagh et al 2023 ) have been integrated with the original DRASTIC method to enhance model performance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An integrated groundwater vulnerability and artificial recharge site suitability assessment using GIS multi-criteria decision making approach in Kayseri region, Turkey

Mouhoumed,

Ekmekcioğlu,

Özger

2024

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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Groundwater resources worldwide face significant challenges that require urgent implementation of sustainable measures for effective long-term management. Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) is regarded as one of the most promising management technologies to address the degradation of groundwater resources. However, in urban aquifers, locating suitable areas that are least vulnerable to contamination for MAR implementation is complex and challenging. Hence, the present study proposes a framework encapsulating the combined assessment of groundwater vulnerability and MAR site suitability analysis to pinpoint the most featured areas for installing drywells in Kayseri, Turkey. To extrapolate the vulnerable zones, not only the original DRASTIC but also its multi-criteria decision-making (MCDA)–based modified variants were evaluated with regard to different hydrochemical parameters using the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC). Besides, the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) rationale was adopted to signify the importance level of criteria and the robustness of the framework was highlighted with sensitivity analysis. In addition, the decision layers and the attained vulnerability layer were combined using the weighted overlay (WOA). The findings indicate that the DRASTIC-SWARA correlates well with the arsenic (AUC = 0.856) and chloride (AUC = 0.648) and was adopted as the vulnerability model. Groundwater quality parameters such as chloride and sodium adsorption ratio, as well as the vadose zone thickness, were found to be the most significant decision parameters with importance levels of 16.75%, 14.51%, and 15.73%, respectively. Overall, 28.24% of the study area was unsuitable for recharge activities with high to very high vulnerability, while the remaining part was further prioritized into low to high suitability classes for MAR application. The proposed framework offers valuable tool to decision-makers for the delineation of favorable MAR sites with minimized susceptibility to contamination.

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“…Objective methods, like entropy, assign modified weights to key features that are vital for the vulnerability assessment process [24]. In recent decades, groundwater vulnerability studies have affirmed the effectiveness of such objective methods in assessing vulnerability [20,[25][26][27][28]. While objective weighting methods assess the modified weights of only essential features in the vulnerability assessment process, subjective weighting methods provide modified weights to all features without considering their significance [24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Groundwater Vulnerability to Nitrate Contamination from Fertilizers Using Modified DRASTIC Frameworks

Torkashvand,

Neshat,

Javadi

et al. 2023

Water

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Vulnerability maps of groundwater provide an efficient means of identifying environmental trends and prioritizing regions for prevention plans. The GIS-based DRASTIC method, however, does not consider the impact of contamination, so there is a need to modify it according to the specifics of the region and its contamination load. The aim of this study is to investigate a suitable DRASTIC modification for vulnerability assessment by changes in its rating and weighting systems. The goal is to explore and compare the impact of both objective and subjective weighting methods in the vulnerability assessment of a smaller aquifer situated beneath agricultural land. The frequency ratio (FR) method is used to adjust the DRASTIC index rates based on nitrate contamination as the main contamination from fertilizers extensively used in the study area. The DRASTIC parameters’ weights are determined using two objective and subjective methods, including Shannon entropy and single-parameter sensitivity analysis (SPSA), respectively. In total, five frameworks, including FR-DRASTIC, DRASTIC-Entropy, DRASTIC-SPSA, FR-SPSA, and FR-Entropy are developed and evaluated. We validate these proposed vulnerability indices based on the nitrate concentrations in 14 samples. The results show that the vulnerability map obtained from the FR-Entropy framework is superior, showing a 0.85 correlation with nitrate concentrations. Notably, Shannon entropy as an objective weighting method outperformed the subjective SPSA approach.

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Implementation and evaluation of different techniques to modify DRASTIC method for groundwater vulnerability assessment: a case study from Bouficha aquifer, Tunisia

Cited by 5 publications

References 68 publications

An Integrated Framework to Assess the Environmental and Economic Impact of Fertilizer Restrictions in a Nitrate-Contaminated Aquifer

An Integrated Framework to Assess the Environmental and Economic Impact of Fertilizer Restrictions in a Nitrate-Contaminated Aquifer

An integrated groundwater vulnerability and artificial recharge site suitability assessment using GIS multi-criteria decision making approach in Kayseri region, Turkey

Groundwater Vulnerability to Nitrate Contamination from Fertilizers Using Modified DRASTIC Frameworks

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