Links between the presence of snowpacks and groundwater recharge – Simulation results for the territory of Slovenia

Abstract

The implementation process of the EU water legislation (EU WFD, EU GWD) has put pressure on hydrogeologists to create, analyse and disseminate groundwater recharge maps in high temporal and spatial resolution for sustainable water management. The distributed water balance model mGROWA is currently applied in several European countries in order to create such maps. Applying mGROWA to country-specific prevailing climatic and hydrogeological conditions requires adaptations of the methodology with regard to the model setup and implementation. In contrast to many lowland regions in Western and Southern Europe, groundwater recharge in many Slovenian aquifers is limited during winter months due to water retention in snowpacks. Against this background the mGROWA model has been enhanced in a Slovenian-German research cooperation by procedures for the simulation of relevant processes associated with formation and melting of snowpacks. In combination with the multi-layer soil water balance module which was already implemented in mGROWA, this new feature enables a realistic simulation of inner-annual variations of groundwater recharge patterns in European alpine and highland areas in daily time-steps on a 100 m grid.In this contribution we briefly introduce the mGROWA methodology and the newly implemented snowpack module. Subsequently, model results for the reference period 1971-2014 are shown. This includes on one hand the evaluation of the simulated snowpack presence by using observations at about 400 sites and an assessment of the evolution of days with snowpack during winter. On the other hand, simulated groundwater recharge rates are evaluated with observed stream flow hydrographs and base-flow derived from these. In this context, also the impact of simulating temporal snowpack presence on groundwater recharge patterns is presented and discussed with a few examples. Finally, the consequences of addressing snowpacks in groundwater recharge assessments will be discussed with regard to the implications for management strategies for sustainable use of groundwater resources in Alpine regions