Human impact on groundwater levels: identification and quantification

Groundwater is a crucial source of freshwater globally, sustaining agriculture, industry, domestic consumption, and the environment. Understanding the human-induced impacts on groundwater is vital, especially in regions threatened by quantitative and qualitative problems. Unfortunately, very often not all information on human activities that may affect groundwater is easily available. We, therefore, test a simple approach combining time series analysis and point detection to identify human impacts on groundwater. The time series models are built by using accessible climate data. In cases where a simulation does not perform well, multiple changepoint detection is applied to capture the time for a potential human impact event and its significance. The method is applied to two Austrian cities where disturbances caused by dam construction and pumping events were detected. The presented results illustrate the capacity to identify and characterize shifts in groundwater dynamics attributed to human interventions. Notably, the methodology proves effective in scenarios where extensive datasets are unavailable, providing a practical and reproducible means to comprehend human-induced alterations in groundwater resources.