Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE

Groundwater is an increasingly important water supply source globally. Understanding the amount of groundwater used versus the volume available is crucial to evaluate future water availability. We present a groundwater stress assessment to quantify the relationship between groundwater use and availability in the world’s 37 largest aquifer systems. We quantify stress according to a ratio of groundwater use to availability, which we call the Renewable Groundwater Stress ratio. The impact of quantifying groundwater use based on nationally reported groundwater withdrawal statistics is compared to a novel approach to quantify use based on remote sensing observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission. Four characteristic stress regimes are defined: Overstressed, Variable Stress, Human-dominated Stress, and Unstressed. The regimes are a function of the sign of use (positive or negative) and the sign of groundwater availability, defined as mean annual recharge. The ability to mitigate and adapt to stressed conditions, where use exceeds sustainable water availability, is a function of economic capacity and land use patterns. Therefore, we qualitatively explore the relationship between stress and anthropogenic biomes. We find that estimates of groundwater stress based on withdrawal statistics are unable to capture the range of characteristic stress regimes, especially in regions dominated by sparsely populated biome types with limited cropland. GRACE-based estimates of use and stress can holistically quantify the impact of groundwater use on stress, resulting in both greater magnitudes of stress and more variability of stress between regions

Radium mass balance and submarine groundwater discharge in Sepetiba Bay, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil

Radium-226 and 228Ra activities were determined in water samples from within and adjacent to Sepetiba Bay, Rio de Janeiro State (Brazil) in 1998, 2005 and 2007. Surface waters in Sepetiba Bay were substantially higher in 226Ra and 228Ra compared to ocean end member samples. Using the residence time of water in the bay we calculated the flux required to maintain the observed enrichment over the ocean end members. We then applied a radium mass balance to estimate the volume of submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) into the bay. The estimates of SGD into Sepetiba Bay (in 1010 L day−1) were 2.56, 3.75, and 1.0, respectively for 1998, 2005, and 2007. These estimates are equivalent to approximately 1% of the total volume of the bay each day or 50 L m−2 day−1. It is likely that a substantial portion of the SGD in Sepetiba Bay consists of infiltrated seawater. This large flux of SGD has the potential to supply substantial quantities of nutrients, carbon and metals into coastal waters. The SGD found here is greater than what is typically found in SGD studies along the eastern United States and areas with similar geologic characteristics. Considering there are many coastal areas around the world like Sepetiba Bay, this could revise upward the already important contribution of SGD to coastal as well as oceanic budgets