Regional scale hydrologic modeling of a karst-dominant geomorphology: The case study of the Island of Crete

Abstract:In this article, several archaeological, historical and other aspects of aqueducts in Crete, Greece, since the prehistoric times until today, are reviewed and presented. In Crete, since the Minoan era, various water management techniques that are found in modern water technologies were developed and applied. One of the most significant features of the Minoan civilization was the architecture of water supply systems in the palaces and other settlements. These technologies were continued and improved mainly during the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods and at the same time spread to other towns in the mainland and islands. The aqueduct technologies developed during the Classical and Hellenistic periods were further developed by Romans, mainly by enlarging their application scale (e.g., water bridges). Several paradigms of Cretan aqueducts are considered by which the significance of those technologies for water supply in areas with limited water resources is justified. A brief presentation and discussion of climatic conditions, the karst hydrogeology and the water resources management in Crete is also included. The article also describes the present water management profile of the island, in terms of the water plants, water supply-irrigation networks, and water renewable energy exploitation of dams and water pipelines.

Section: The Karst Hydrogeology Of the Island Of Cretementioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of Cretan Aqueducts and Their Potential for Hydroelectric Exploitation

Nikolaou¹,

Christodoulakos

Piperidis³

et al. 2017

“…Missing parameters were estimated from soil texture using pedotransfer functions [45]. The HWSD and its predecessors have been used for SWAT simulations in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, among others [1,11,12,36,[46][47][48]. • Climate: In a previous study, ten precipitation datasets were analyzed for six sub-basins in the study area [23].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-Objective Validation of SWAT for Sparsely-Gauged West African River Basins—A Remote Sensing Approach

Poméon

Diekkrüger

Springer

et al. 2018

Predicting freshwater resources is a major concern in West Africa, where large parts of the population depend on rain-fed subsistence agriculture. However, a steady decline in the availability of in-situ measurements of climatic and hydrologic variables makes it difficult to simulate water resource availability with hydrological models. In this study, a modeling framework was set up for sparsely-gauged catchments in West Africa using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), whilst largely relying on remote sensing and reanalysis inputs. The model was calibrated using two different strategies and validated using discharge measurements. New in this study is the use of a multi-objective validation conducted to further investigate the performance of the model, where simulated actual evapotranspiration, soil moisture, and total water storage were evaluated using remote sensing data. Results show that the model performs well (R 2 calibration: 0.52 and 0.51; R 2 validation: 0.63 and 0.61) and the multi-objective validation reveals good agreement between predictions and observations. The study reveals the potential of using remote sensing data in sparsely-gauged catchments, resulting in good performance and providing data for evaluating water balance components that are not usually validated. The modeling framework presented in this study is the basis for future studies, which will address model response to extreme drought and flood events and further examine the coincidence with Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) total water storage retrievals.

“…More specifically, Palanisamy and Workman (2014) [22] developed the KarstSWAT model to simulate IGF in watersheds dominated by typical karst features, determining input (recharge in sinkholes) and output (discharge in springs) water component dynamics. Malagó et al (2016) [23] developed the KSWAT model, which was based on a combination of two previous SWAT applications: (1) a SWAT model adaptation to consider fast infiltration through caves and sinkholes up to the deep aquifers developed by Baffaut and Benson (2009) [24] and (2) a karst flow model in Excel to simulate spring flow discharge developed by Nikolaidis et al (2013) [25]. More recently, Nguyen et al (2020) [14] proposed a two linear reservoir model to represent the duality of aquifer recharge and discharge processes in a karst-dominated area in Germany.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coupling SWAT Model and CMB Method for Modeling of High-Permeability Bedrock Basins Receiving Interbasin Groundwater Flow

Senent‐Aparicio

Alcalá

Liu

et al. 2020

This paper couples the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model and the chloride mass balance (CMB) method to improve the modeling of streamflow in high-permeability bedrock basins receiving interbasin groundwater flow (IGF). IGF refers to the naturally occurring groundwater flow beneath a topographic divide, which indicates that baseflow simulated by standard hydrological models may be substantially less than its actual magnitude. Identification and quantification of IGF is so difficult that most hydrological models use convenient simplifications to ignore it, leaving us with minimal knowledge of strategies to quantify it. The Castril River basin (CRB) was chosen to show this problematic and to propose the CMB method to assess the magnitude of the IGF contribution to baseflow. In this headwater area, which has null groundwater exploitation, the CMB method shows that yearly IGF hardly varies and represents about 51% of mean yearly baseflow. Based on this external IGF appraisal, simulated streamflow was corrected to obtain a reduction in the percent bias of the SWAT model, from 52.29 to 22.40. Corrected simulated streamflow was used during the SWAT model calibration and validation phases. The Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) coefficient and the logarithmic values of NSE (lnNSE) were used for overall SWAT model performance. For calibration and validation, monthly NSE was 0.77 and 0.80, respectively, whereas daily lnNSE was 0.81 and 0.64, respectively. This methodological framework, which includes initial system conceptualization and a new formulation, provides a reproducible way to deal with similar basins, the baseflow component of which is strongly determined by IGF.