Inventory of managed aquifer recharge sites in Europe: historical development, current situation and perspectives

Abstract

Different types of managed aquifer recharge (MAR) schemes are widely distributed and applied on various scales and for various purposes in the European countries, but a systematic categorization and compilation of data has been missing up to now. The European MAR catalogue presented herein contains various key parameters collected from the available literature. The catalogue includes 224 currently active MAR sites found in 23 European countries. Large quantities of drinking water are produced by MAR sites in Hungary,

Web-based global inventory of managed aquifer recharge applications

“…With some exceptions [e.g., in Europe, where about 200 MAR schemes, specifically riverbank filtration, are used for the production of drinking water (Sprenger et al 2017)], the contribution of MAR to drinking water supply systems is still rather low. The main reasons for the low acceptability rates are the poor awareness on MAR in general and the lack of access to information (demonstration projects), which make water supply operators to adopt often much costlier, but considered 'safe' solutions (Sheehan 2009). Under these circumstances, it is safe to consider that a better dissemination of results from successful projects could help stakeholders to understand the benefits of MAR and adopt the methodology on a larger scale.…”

A risk assessment methodology to evaluate the risk failure of managed aquifer recharge in the Mediterranean Basin

“…MAR includes a range of recharge options (surface or subsurface) and water sources (natural, reclaimed, or desalinated) (Bouwer, 2002;Dillon, 2005;Dillon et al, 2009;Maliva and Missimer, 2012;Sprenger et al, 2017). Furthermore, MAR can involve different engineering solutions, among them are infiltration ponds, surface spreading, bank filtration, and wells infiltrating into either the unsaturated or the saturated zones.…”

Water Quality Considerations on the Rise as the Use of Managed Aquifer Recharge Systems Widens

“…Due to increasing weather variability caused by climate change, growing population and increasing urbanization which concentrates agricultural, industrial and drinking water demands, the world is increasingly challenged to provide a sustainable long term supply of fresh water (e.g., [1]). This challenge is particularly pronounced in geographic areas where fresh water is naturally scarce, such as deserts (e.g., [2][3][4]) and coastal areas (e.g., [5,6]) that may further suffer from sea water intrusion by sea level rise, land subsidence and a decrease in seasonal discharge by major rivers (e.g., [7][8][9]). As a consequence, problems such as seasonal water shortage, overexploitation of groundwater resources, saltwater intrusion, and disappearance of wetlands are already commonly occurring phenomena.…”

“…Important advantages of these techniques are the support of higher water demands [11,12], overcoming the temporal mismatch between water supply and demand [13,14], water quality improvements, and the protection of water against evaporation losses, algae blooms, and atmospheric fallout of pollutants during subterranean storage [13,14]. Although the application of MAR techniques has a history that goes back to pre-modern times (e.g., [7]), these benefits together with today's worldwide challenge for the sustainable management of water resources have caused MAR to be increasingly considered as a sustainable, water resource-efficient technique to meet both current and future water demands (e.g., [15][16][17]). …”

“…To fulfill the promise of MAR, however, to become globally significant in securing fresh water availability for the future [7], MAR techniques need to be applied in much larger numbers. Moreover, they also require application at much larger scales, and for a wider range of conditions and purposes.…”