Quantifying Groundwater Resources for Municipal Water Use in a Data-Scarce Region

Abstract

Groundwater is a major source of drinking water worldwide, often considered more reliable than surface water and more accessible. Nowadays, there is wide recognition by the scientific community that groundwater resources are under threat from overexploitation and pollution. Furthermore, frequent and prolonged drought periods due to climate change can seriously affect groundwater recharge. For an appropriate and sustainable management of water systems supplied by springs and/or groundwater withdrawn from aquifers through drilling wells or drainage galleries, the need arises to properly quantify groundwater resources availability, mainly at the monthly scale, as groundwater recharge is influenced by seasonality, especially in the Mediterranean areas. Such evaluation is particularly important for ungauged groundwater bodies. This is the case of the aquifer supplying the Santissima Aqueduct, the oldest water supply infrastructure of the city of Messina in Sicily (Southern Italy), whose groundwater flows are measured only occasionally through spring water sampling at the water abstraction plants. Moreover, these plants are barely maintained because they are difficult to reach. In this study, groundwater recharge assessment for the Santissima Aqueduct is carried out through a GIS-based inverse hydrogeological balance methodology. Although this approach was originally designed to assess aquifer recharge at the annual scale, wherever a model conceptualization of the groundwater system was hindered by the lack of data, in the present study some changes are proposed to adjust the model to the monthly scale. In particular, the procedure for evapotranspiration assessment is based on the Global Aridity Index within the Budyko framework. The application of the proposed methodology shows satisfactory results, suggesting that it can be successfully applied for groundwater resources estimation in a context where monthly information is relevant for water resources planning and management.

A Technical Note on the Application of a Water Budget Model at Regional Scale: A Water Manager’s Approach towards a Sustainable Water Resources Management

“…Furthermore, a practical advantage of the adopted water budget framework is that it requires a reduced number of inputs, in accordance with the parsimony philosophy [11]. Moreover, a simple and parsimonious methodology is functional in terms of (i) any users' level of expertise, (ii) whether the existing data in a territory do not suffice to develop a detailed model, and (iii) whether the study's aim involves a wide range of spatial and temporal scales [9].…”

“…However, it is widely endorsed that for practical case studies, simplified analytical approaches are more suitable to implement and facilitate the comprehension of the processes covered [9,10]. Furthermore, one of their important advantages relies on the fact few parameters are required to explain the hydrological phenomena, accordingly with the parsimony philosophy in modelling [11].…”

Identifying the Impacts of Climate Change and Human Activities on Vegetation Cover Changes: A Case Study of the Yangtze River Basin, China

“…Due to the complex nonlinear relationship between vegetation cover and meteorological elements, it is not comprehensive to simply use the multiple linear regression model to fit the linear relationship between vegetation cover, precipitation and temperature together, and simply using residual analysis to quantify the impact of human activities on vegetation cover is not comprehensive. Other environmental factors, such as humidity, evapotranspiration [52], sunshine duration, CO 2 concentration, nitrogen deposition, and soil properties, can all interact with plant growth and land cover change [53] and have a significant impact on vegetation growth. For example, evapotranspiration is directly related to the dry-wet evolution of climate and the physiological activities of the vegetation ecosystem, and has the potential ability to describe vegetation response to the dry-wet evolution of climate [54].…”

Catchment‐Wide Groundwater Budget for the Inkomati‐Usuthu Water Management Area in South Africa

“…To circumvent the prevailing water stress situation, the South African National Water Resource Strategy considers groundwater resources as an important consideration for the future planning and management of freshwater resources (Hedden and Cilliers 2014). Subsequently, the need arises to properly quantify groundwater resource availability for appropriate and sustainable management of water systems supplied by groundwater (Borzì and Bonaccorso 2021).…”