Review on groundwater recharge in carbonate aquifers from SW Mediterranean (Betic Cordillera, S Spain)

Abstract

This paper presents a review of groundwater recharge assessment in some 50 carbonate aquifers of the extreme SW Mediterranean domain (Betic Cordillera, southern Spain), an area highly vulnerable to climate change. The selected aquifers represent a broad range of meteorological and geological conditions, and consequently results can be expanded eastward to other Mediterranean aquifers. The methods most commonly applied for recharge assessment over the past 20 years are aquifer water budget and soil water balance. While these methods support the first steps in groundwater management in Spain, precision in quantification requires other methods to be incorporated. They include chloride mass balance, diverse lumped model codes and empirical methods such as APLIS. In eastern areas of the Betic Cordillera, where semiarid conditions prevail, lumped and distributed models for recharge assessment and calibration are based on the time series of water table data. The mean annual rainfall, recharge and coefficient infiltration (as percentage of rainfall) are, respectively, 648, 262 mm/year and 38 %. A high correlation was observed between annual rainfall and annual recharge in all the studied aquifers. However, the infiltration coefficient can vary substantially even with the same annual rainfall recharge. This reflects significant differences in the degree of surface karstification and the development of the vegetal cover-soil-epikarst system in the carbonate aquifers of the Betic Cordillera. The results of this work may serve to improve the assessment and management of renewable water resources in western Mediterranean carbonate aquifers. The findings are moreover useful for future comparisons involving recharge assessments under different scenarios of climate change and changes in land use.

An Assessment of Groundwater Recharge at a Regional Scale for Sustainable Resource Management: Province of Alicante (SE Spain)

“…The physical and climatic characteristics of the province of Alicante determine a low average recharge rate (12%) from total rainfall. This value is typical of semiarid areas and is within the range of values found for some aquifers in this and other regions with similar characteristics [91,[95][96][97][98]. This explains why the entries in many of the provincial systems have been unable to balance the intensive extractions that have taken place for decades, especially in Sectors IV, VI, and VII.…”

Coastal aquifer recharge and groundwater–seawater exchanges using downscaled GRACE data: case study of the Djeffara plain (Libya–Tunisia)

“…This represents 1.56×10 6 m 3 •yr −1 •km −1 suggesting a still low "natural" SGD value. A recharge ratio of between 23 and 52% (average 35%) for karstified carbonates [Allocca et al, 2014, Arfib and Charlier, 2016, Baudement et al, 2017, Martos-Rosillo et al, 2015, Polemio, 2016, Zagana et al, 2007, and between 10 and 21% (average 16%) for detritic aquifer formations [Séraphin et al, 2016, Yagbasan, 2016, Zagana et al, 2007 were reported in the north Mediterranean area (Spain to Turkey). Given that karstic aquifers represent almost 20% of the coastal areas in Mediterranean Europe [Goldscheider et al, 2020], an average value of about 20% for the recharge ratio, therefore tenfold higher than in the southern part of the Mediterranean domain (2 to 3%), can be considered.…”

Global karst springs hydrograph dataset for research and management of the world’s fastest-flowing groundwater

“…karst areas as karst spring discharges are under-represented. Access to data has been identified as a major impediment in quantifying karstification, modelling flow dynamics and transport processes of karst groundwater 2,17 . Studies involving large-scale parameter estimation or comparative studies in karst hydrology are still fairly rare and unrealistic representations of hydrological processes in karst regions can still be found in many large-scale hydrological models 17,18 .…”