Journal of Water and Land Development

Abstract

The use of non-centralised water supply in remote settlements is currently the only possible option. Monitoring the water quality of such supply sources is a complicated task in such areas, especially when there are active karst processes and difficult groundwater conditions. The application of deterministic analytical models of water supply under the risk of disturbance to groundwater dynamics is not efficient. Significant quantitative and even qualitative changes in groundwater conditions may take place between the calculated points, and the underestimation of these changes in expectation-driven computation models may result in serious geoecological issues. This research studied and justifies the use of adaptive dynamic hydrogeological control in an area of non-centralised water supply based on the identification of key zones of geodynamic karst monitoring and the electrical express-monitoring of water resources. The identification of key zones is based on an integrated analysis of available groundwater information that describes changes in groundwater hydrodynamic conditions at the time of the karst forecast. The development of karst-suffusion processes is accompanied by more intense dynamic changes in local areas of geologic environment compared to the general variation in intensity. Information about the occurrence of destructive groundwater processes by means of selective geodynamic monitoring may thus be obtained much earlier than with environmental geodynamics monitoring as a whole. The experimental hydrogeological control of an area of non-centralised water supply was conducted on the right bank of the Oka River in Nizhny Novgorod region, a locality with an active manifestation of karst processes. Structure and algorithms of space-time processing of hydrogeological control data developed by authors have been used. The approach based on multifrequency vertical electrical sounding (MFVES) method has shown good correspondence with direct borehole observation when measuring depth of the first aquifer. Zones of unsafe water use have been revealed. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method and the need for further regular observations of destructive groundwater processes by means of selective hydrogeodynamic monitoring.