Analysis of groundwater recharge in a mountainous basin

Since climate change is challenging every part of the water cycle, not only at the global scale but also regionally and locally, it is increasingly important to understand its impact on both surface and subsurface hydrological processes, with particular interest in groundwater recharge, which is a key component. This is fundamental for many reasons, starting from irrigation and water management strategies. To do so, we apply two different models to estimate historical groundwater recharge in one case study in a mountainous catchment in Northern Italy.

Specifically, we would employ the GEOframe model, developed by the University of Trento, which offers a flexible, component-based framework for process-based simulations of hydrological dynamics, including evapotranspiration, snowmelt, infiltration and groundwater recharge at high spatial-temporal resolution.

The second one is a linear reservoir model developed at the University of Padova, tailored for efficient lumped-parameter estimation of recharge through simplified storage-discharge relationships calibrated against observed hydrographs and soil data.

The input that we will use are the hourly dataset of precipitation and air temperature from the regional network of Veneto region. The final idea is to analyze the current status and trends of groundwater recharge and compare with the dataset from the observations.