Modeling Water Resources and River-Aquifer Interaction in the Júcar River Basin, Spain

Miguel Pérez-Martín (), Teodoro Estrela, Joaquín Andreu and Javier Ferrer

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2014, vol. 28, issue 12, 4337-4358

Abstract: The paper presents how to solve some practical problems of water planning in a medium/large river basin, such as: the water resources assessment and its spatial-temporal variability over the long-short term, the impact of human activities on the water cycle, due to groundwater pumping and water returns into aquifers, the river-aquifer interactions and the aquifer depletion. It is based on the use of a new monthly conceptual distributed water balance model -PATRICAL- that includes the surface water (SW), groundwater (GW) behavior and the river-aquifer interaction. The model is applied to the Júcar River Basin District (RBD) in Spain (43,000 km 2 ), with more than 250 aquifers, including catchments with humid climates (Júcar RBD northern), semiarid and arid catchments (southern). The model has a small number of parameters and obtains a satisfactory performance in SW and GW behavior. It has been calibrated/validated using monthly streamflows and two additional elements not generally used in models for large river basins, GW levels and river-aquifer interactions. In the hydrological time series of the Júcar RBD headers a statistical change point in the year 1979/80 is detected. It is due to changes in precipitation patterns and represents a 40 % of reduction in streamflows in relation with the previous period. The impact of GW pumping in all aquifers is determined, the ‘Mancha Oriental’ aquifer produces a significant reduction in streamflows of the Júcar river –around 200–250 hm 3 /year. The GW level in the ‘Villena-Benejama’ aquifer -Vinalopo Valley- has declined more than 200 m in last 30 years. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Water balance model; Large river basin; Water resources assessment; River-aquifer interaction; Hydrological changes; Aquifer depletion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11269-014-0755-3

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