Journal ArticleDOI
Global synthesis of groundwater recharge in semiarid and arid regions
Bridget R. Scanlon,K. E. Keese,Alan L. Flint,Lorraine E. Flint,C.B. Gaye,W. Michael Edmunds,Ian Simmers +6 more
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TLDR
A global synthesis of the findings from ∼140 recharge study areas in semi-arid and arid regions provides important information on recharge rates, controls, and processes, which are critical for sustainable water development as mentioned in this paper.Abstract:
Global synthesis of the findings from ∼140 recharge study areas in semiarid and arid regions provides important information on recharge rates, controls, and processes, which are critical for sustainable water development. Water resource evaluation, dryland salinity assessment (Australia), and radioactive waste disposal (US) are among the primary goals of many of these recharge studies. The chloride mass balance (CMB) technique is widely used to estimate recharge. Average recharge rates estimated over large areas (40–374 000 km2) range from 0·2 to 35 mm year−1, representing 0·1–5% of long-term average annual precipitation. Extreme local variability in recharge, with rates up to ∼720 m year−1, results from focussed recharge beneath ephemeral streams and lakes and preferential flow mostly in fractured systems. System response to climate variability and land use/land cover (LU/LC) changes is archived in unsaturated zone tracer profiles and in groundwater level fluctuations. Inter-annual climate variability related to El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) results in up to three times higher recharge in regions within the SW US during periods of frequent El Ninos (1977–1998) relative to periods dominated by La Ninas (1941–1957). Enhanced recharge related to ENSO is also documented in Argentina. Climate variability at decadal to century scales recorded in chloride profiles in Africa results in recharge rates of 30 mm year−1 during the Sahel drought (1970–1986) to 150 mm year−1 during non-drought periods. Variations in climate at millennial scales in the SW US changed systems from recharge during the Pleistocene glacial period (≥10 000 years ago) to discharge during the Holocene semiarid period. LU/LC changes such as deforestation in Australia increased recharge up to about 2 orders of magnitude. Changes from natural grassland and shrublands to dryland (rain-fed) agriculture altered systems from discharge (evapotranspiration, ET) to recharge in the SW US. The impact of LU change was much greater than climate variability in Niger (Africa), where replacement of savanna by crops increased recharge by about an order of magnitude even during severe droughts. Sensitivity of recharge to LU/LC changes suggests that recharge may be controlled through management of LU. In irrigated areas, recharge varies from 10 to 485 mm year−1, representing 1–25% of irrigation plus precipitation. However, irrigation pumpage in groundwater-fed irrigated areas greatly exceeds recharge rates, resulting in groundwater mining. Increased recharge related to cultivation has mobilized salts that accumulated in the unsaturated zone over millennia, resulting in widespread groundwater and surface water contamination, particularly in Australia. The synthesis of recharge rates provided in this study contains valuable information for developing sustainable groundwater resource programmes within the context of climate variability and LU/LC change. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Ground water and climate change
Richard G. Taylor,Bridget R. Scanlon,Petra Döll,Matthew Rodell,Rens van Beek,Yoshihide Wada,Laurent Longuevergne,Marc Leblanc,James S. Famiglietti,Mike Edmunds,Leonard F. Konikow,Timothy R. Green,Jianyao Chen,Makoto Taniguchi,Marc F. P. Bierkens,Alan MacDonald,Ying Fan,Reed M. Maxwell,Yossi Yechieli,Jason J. Gurdak,Diana M. Allen,Mohammad Shamsudduha,Kevin M. Hiscock,Pat J.-F. Yeh,Ian P. Holman,Holger Treidel +25 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors critically review recent research assessing the impacts of climate on ground water through natural and human-induced processes as well as through groundwater-driven feedbacks on the climate system, and highlight the possible opportunities and challenges of using and sustaining groundwater resources in climate adaptation strategies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Beneath the surface of global change: Impacts of climate change on groundwater
Timothy R. Green,Makoto Taniguchi,Henk Kooi,Jason J. Gurdak,Diana M. Allen,Kevin M. Hiscock,Holger Treidel,Alice Aureli +7 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide an overview and synthesis of the key aspects of subsurface hydrology, including water quantity and quality, related to global change and potential impacts of groundwater on the global climate system.
Journal ArticleDOI
Hydrological drought explained
TL;DR: A review of the current state of scientific knowledge of definitions, processes, and quantification of hydrological drought is given in this paper, where the influence of climate and terrestrial properties (geology, land use) on hydrologic drought characteristics and the role of storage is discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Regional strategies for the accelerating global problem of groundwater depletion
TL;DR: In this paper, a review of our understanding of groundwater depletion suggests that although the problem is global, solutions must be adapted to specific regional requirements at the aquifer scale, and that the world's largest freshwater resource is groundwater.
Journal ArticleDOI
The future of hydrology: an evolving science for a changing world.
Thorsten Wagener,Murugesu Sivapalan,Murugesu Sivapalan,Peter Troch,Brian L. McGlynn,Ciaran J. Harman,Hoshin V. Gupta,Praveen Kumar,P. Suresh C. Rao,Nandita B. Basu,Jennifer S. Wilson +10 more
TL;DR: For a long-term initiative to address the regional implications of environmental change, hydrologists must become both synthesists and analysts, understanding the functioning of individual system components, while operating firmly within a well-designed hypothesis testing framework.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Global and Regional Scale Precipitation Patterns Associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation
TL;DR: In this article, the amplitude and phase of the Arm harmonic fitted to the 24-month composite values are plotted in the form of a vector for each station, which reveals both the regions of spatially coherent ENSO-related precipitation and the phase of this signal in relation to the evolution of the composite episode.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation
Nathan J. Mantua,Steven R. Hare +1 more
TL;DR: The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has been described by some as a long-lived El Nino-like pattern of Pacific climate variability, and by others as a blend of two sometimes independent modes having distinct spatial and temporal characteristics of North Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) variability as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Choosing appropriate techniques for quantifying groundwater recharge
TL;DR: The reliability of recharge estimates using different tech- niques is variable as mentioned in this paper, and uncertainties in each approach to estimating recharge underscore the need for application of multiple techniques to increase the expected recharge rates at a site.
Journal Article
Completion of the 1990s national land cover data set for the conterminous united states from landsat thematic mapper data and ancillary data sources
James E. Vogelmann,Stephen M. Howard,Limin Yang,Charles R. Larson,Bruce K. Wylie,J. Nicholas Van Driel +5 more
TL;DR: The National Land Cover Data Set (NLCD) as mentioned in this paper is an intermediate-scale national land cover data set derived from early 1990s Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery and other sources of digital data.
Journal ArticleDOI
A global hydrological model for deriving water availability indicators: model tuning and validation
TL;DR: The WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model (WGHM) as discussed by the authors is a submodel of the global water use and availability model, which computes surface runoff, groundwater recharge and river discharge at a spatial resolution of 0.58.
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