Future-proofing hydrogeology by revising groundwater monitoring practice

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TECHNICAL NOTE

Future-proofing hydrogeology by revising groundwater monitoring practice Gabriel C. Rau 1,2 & Mark O. Cuthbert 2,3 & Vincent E. A. Post 4 & Daniel Schweizer 1 & R. Ian Acworth 2 & Martin S. Andersen 2 & Philipp Blum 1 & Elisabetta Carrara 5 & Todd C. Rasmussen 6 & Shemin Ge 7 Received: 21 April 2020 / Accepted: 9 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020

Abstract Groundwater is an important global resource and its sustainable use faces major challenges. New methods and advances in computational science could lead to much improved understanding of groundwater processes and subsurface properties. A closer look at current groundwater monitoring practice reveals the need for updates with a special focus on the benefits of highfrequency and high-resolution datasets. To future-proof hydrogeology, this technical note raises awareness about the necessity for improvement, provides initial recommendations and advocates for the development of universal guidelines. Keywords Groundwater monitoring . Equipment/field techniques . High resolution . High frequency . Guidelines

Novel approaches can tackle big challenges in hydrogeology Our world faces many groundwater-related challenges (Alley 2002), for example over-extraction (e.g., Wada et al. 2010) and associated reduction in river base flow (e.g., de Graaf et al. 2019), land subsidence (e.g., Galloway and Burbey 2011), sea-water intrusion (e.g., Jiao and Post 2019) and deterioration of groundwater quality, due to arsenic (Rodriguez-Lado et al. 2013) or increasing nitrate concentrations (e.g. Hansen et al. 2017). This * Gabriel C. Rau [email protected] 1

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute of Applied Geosciences (AGW), Karlsruhe, Germany

2

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia

3

School of Earth and Ocean Sciences & Water Research Institute, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

4

Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Hanover, Germany

5

Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), Melbourne, Australia

6

Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia (UGA), Athens, GA, USA

7

Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

is further exacerbated by groundwaters’ slow response to anthropogenic and climatic impacts (i.e. long hydraulic memory; Cuthbert et al. 2019a) and competition for water for multiple purposes including domestic and stock supply, agriculture, thermal energy storage (e.g., Fleuchaus et al. 2018), resource mining and the environment (de Graaf et al. 2019). Monitoring groundwater, for example by measuring heads, underpins virtually all groundwater flow and storage investigations (e.g., Rau et al. 2019) including the calibration of groundwater flow models (e.g., Hill and Tiedeman 2007) as well as ground-truth interpretations of large-scale indirect remote sensing or surface geophysical observations (e.g., Alley and Konikow 2015). Furthermore, groundwater monitoring is critical in t