Integrating field work and large-scale modeling to improve assessment of karst water resources
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PAPER
Integrating field work and large-scale modeling to improve assessment of karst water resources Andreas Hartmann 1,2
&
Yan Liu 1 & Tunde Olarinoye 1 & Romane Berthelin 1 & Vera Marx 1
Received: 19 May 2020 / Accepted: 14 October 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Comprehensive management of karst water resources requires sufficient understanding of their dynamics and karst-specific modeling tools. However, the limited availability of observations of karstic groundwater dynamics has been prohibiting the assessment of karst water resources at regional to global scales. This paper presents the first global effort to integrate experimental approaches and large-scale modeling. Using a global soil-moisture monitoring program and a global database of karst spring discharges, the simulations of a preliminary global karstic-groundwater-recharge model are evaluated. It is shown that soil moisture is a crucial variable that better distinguishes recharge dynamics in different climates and for different land cover types. The newly developed dataset of karst spring discharges provides first insights into the wide variability of discharge volumes and recharge areas of different karst springs around the globe. Comparing the model simulations with the newly collected soilmoisture and spring-discharge observations, indicates that (1) improvements of the recharge model are still necessary to obtain a better representation of different land cover types and snow processes, and (2) there is a need to incorporate groundwater dynamics. Applying and strictly evaluating these improvements in the model will finally provide a tool to identify hot spots of current or future water scarcity in the karst regions around the globe, thus supporting national and international water governance. Keywords Karst . Soil moisture . Spring discharge analysis . Groundwater recharge . Global simulation model
Introduction In many countries, karst groundwater is the dominant or even the only available source of freshwater (Stevanović 2019). Climate models indicate that in the next 100 years, karst regions will experience a strong increase of temperature and changes of precipitation in many regions (Hartmann et al. 2014). The potential changes may significantly affect hydrological regimes (Ferguson and Gleeson 2012) and may Published in the special issue “Five decades of advances in karst hydrogeology”. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10040-020-02258-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Andreas Hartmann [email protected] 1
University of Freiburg, Friedrichstrasse 39, 79098 Freiburg, Germany
2
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
increase stress on karst water resources. A decrease of water availability can have strong negative impacts on the wellbeing of agriculture, tourism, infrastructure, energy supply, ecosystems and biodiversity. To be prepared, stakeholders and policy makers have to unde
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