Deepening the Quantitative Understanding of Groundwater Systems in Data-Scarce Areas

Summary

A groundwater system is regulated by two primary boundaries: climatic and anthropogenic. Changes in climate variables influence the volume of infiltrating water to the subsurface, while population growth increases water demands, which subsequently (partially) fulfilled by abstracting groundwater resources. To understand and simulate groundwater systems’ behavior in response to these events, researchers typically develop a groundwater model. However, doing so remains challenging in areas where there are limited data to work with. This thesis presents a number of methods to face these challenges, by making use of alternative data such as remote-sensing products and/or hydrogeochemistry data, as well as demonstrates their performances. The proposed framework could be beneficial to be applied in other areas with limited information available to gain deeper quantitative understanding of its groundwater system. Having said that, it also emphasizes the importance of establishing and improving groundwater-related data collection practice.