Scientific Results

This catalogue is obtained by conducting a systematic literature review of scientific studies and reviews related to monitoring, forecasting, and simulating the inland water cycle. The analysis maps scientific expertise across research groups and classifies findings by the type of inland water studied, application focus, and geographical scope. A gap analysis will identify missing research areas and assess their relevance to policymaking.

ID â–Č Type Year Authors Title Venue/Journal DOI Research type Water System Technical Focus Abstract Link with Projects Link with Tools Related policies ID
publications-2401 Peer reviewed articles 2024 Rodrigo PĂ©rez-Illanes, Daniel FernĂ ndez-Garcia A general purpose parallel Fortran code for grid projected concentration reconstruction from multidimensional particle distributions Environmental Modelling & Software 10.1016/j.envsoft.2024.106008 Control Systems Water Distribution Networks No abstract available 814066
publications-2402 Peer reviewed articles 2022 Maria Chiara Lippera, Ulrike Werban, Thomas Vienken Improving clogging predictions at managed aquifer recharge sites: a quantitative assessment on the vertical distribution of intrusive fines Hydrogeology Journal 10.1007/s10040-022-02581-7 Simulation & Modeling Groundwater AbstractManaged aquifer recharge (MAR) is an emerging approach to enhancing water storage capacity, improving water supply security and countering groundwater overexploitation. However, physical clogging, i.e. accumulation of suspended organic and inorganic solids within a sediment matrix, can lead to a significant reduction of infiltration rates and present difficulties in the functioning of MAR infrastructure. Clogging and subsequent reduction in infiltration capacity are often quantified based on monitoring data or field investigations, rather than on forecasts. Existing predictive models require specific parameterisation, making an application to heterogeneous sites, or under changing conditions, difficult. Hence, a generalised understanding of how intrusive fine particles distribute over depth during water recharge cycles for typical MAR infiltration basin sediments is needed to predict clogging susceptibility and clogging patterns already in the planning phase and before operation of MAR schemes. The study will contribute to operational reliability, deduce optimised management practices, and, ideally, reduce maintenance efforts. To achieve this goal, data from different soil-column clogging experiments are reviewed and complemented with experiments to establish a generally valid relationship for the vertical distribution of intrusive fines under consideration of the primary porous media’s and intruding particles’ characteristics. Obtained results allow for quantification of the amount of particles retained at the surface of the porous media, i.e. formation of a filter cake, a description of the distribution of fines over depth, and total clogging depth. Finally, the findings are applied to a real MAR case study site to showcase the quantification of clogging effects on recharge rates. 814066
publications-2403 Peer reviewed articles 2023 Francesco Demichele, Fabian Micallef, Ivan Portoghese, Julian Alexander Mamo, Manuel Sapiano, Michael Schembri, Christoph SchĂŒth Determining Aquifer Hydrogeological Parameters in Coastal Aquifers from Tidal Attenuation Analysis, Case Study: The Malta Mean Sea Level Aquifer System Water 10.3390/w15010177 Data Management & Analytics Groundwater The coastal and carbonate Mean Sea Level Aquifer (MSLA) of Malta is characterised by high anisotropy and heterogeneity, which together make evaluating the aquifer system parameters a challenging task. In this paper, we present an approach for the determination of the hydrogeological parameters of this coastal aquifer based on tidal-induced groundwater fluctuations that can be applied in other similar contexts. This work presents an analysis of data undertaken on monitoring boreholes located in the Malta MSLA exhibiting tidal-induced groundwater fluctuations. This allowed us to determine the values of three main hydrogeological parameters: hydraulic diffusivity, transmissivity and hydraulic conductivity. These will subsequently be used as an input for groundwater flow and reactive transport modelling purposes. In this study, a methodology based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) is proposed to improve the applicability of the Jacob–Ferris method to the observed groundwater level and sea level fluctuations. The FFT reproduced signals allowed us to isolate the component induced by sea tides, thus eliminating short- and long-term variations of the water table induced by other disruptive factors. Results showed high variability of hydrogeological parameters within a short distance, reflecting the high anisotropy and heterogeneity of the aquifer system. The transmissivity values derived from the Jacob–Ferris method are complemented with results derived from the pumping tests with the aim of estimating the spatial distribution of the aquifer transmissivity for the study area. The spatial variability of transmissivity values is analysed by means of geostatistics tools for estimating uncertainty, correlation and variation in space through the use of semi-variograms. 814066
publications-2404 Peer reviewed articles 2024 Rodrigo PĂ©rez-Illanes, Daniel FernĂ ndez-Garcia MODPATH-RW: A Random Walk Particle Tracking Code for Solute Transport in Heterogeneous Aquifers Groundwater 10.1111/gwat.13390 Data Management & Analytics Wastewater Treatment Plants AbstractRandom walk particle tracking (RWPT) is a discrete particle method that offers several advantages for simulating solute transport in heterogeneous geological systems. The formulation is a discrete solution to the advection‐dispersion equation, yielding results that are not influenced by grid‐related numerical dispersion. Numerical dispersion impacts the magnitude of concentrations and gradients obtained from classical grid‐based solvers in advection‐dominated problems with relatively large grid PĂ©clet numbers. Accurate predictions of concentrations are crucial for reactive transport studies, and RWPT has been recognized for its potential benefits for this kind of application. This highlights the need for a solute transport program based on RWPT that can be seamlessly integrated with industry‐standard groundwater flow models. This article presents a solute transport code that implements the RWPT method by extension of the particle tracking model MODPATH, which provides the base infrastructure for interacting with several variants of MODFLOW groundwater flow models. The implementation is achieved by developing a method for determining the exact cell‐exit position of a particle undergoing simultaneous advection and dispersion, allowing for the sequential transfer of particles between flow model cells. The program is compatible with rectangular unstructured grids and integrates a module for the smoothed reconstruction of concentrations. In addition, the program incorporates parallel processing of particles using the OpenMP library, enabling faster simulations of solute transport in heterogeneous systems. Numerical test cases involving different applications in hydrogeology benchmark the RWPT model with well‐known transport codes. 814066
publications-2405 Peer reviewed articles 2023 Fernández Escalante, Enrique; Henao Casas, Jose David; Moreno de Guerra Per, Carlos; Maza Vera, María Dolores; Moreno Valverde, Carles Unintentional Recharge of Aquifers from Small Dams and Dykes in Spain: A GIS-Based Approach to Determine a Fractional Volume Earth 10.3390/earth4030031 Data Management & Analytics Hydropower Dams & reservoirs Conducting an accurate hydrological water balance at the regional and country-wide scales is paramount to assessing available water resources and adequately allocating them. One of the main components of these balances is the anthropogenic recharge of groundwater either intentionally, through managed aquifer recharge (MAR), or unintentionally, where infiltration from dams and dykes can play a significant role. In Spain, proper management of water resources is critical due to the arid to semiarid conditions prevalent in most of the territory and the relevance of water resources for maintaining a robust agricultural sector. Previous work estimated country-wide recharge from MAR at 150 to 280 Mm3/year. Recently, water authorities pointed out that, according to hydrological water balances, the total unintentional recharge volume from water courses may exceed 500 Mm3/year. The present research aims to present a new inventory of transverse structures (also referred to as small dams and dykes) in Spain and use it to estimate country-wide unintentional recharge. The inventory, compiled by the Spanish Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, has 27,680 structures and includes construction and impoundment characteristics, which allow for estimating the wet perimeter and the infiltration area. To this end, structural data from the inventory were crossed through map algebra in a GIS environment with thematic layers, such as lithology, permeability, the digital elevation model, the transverse structures’ wetted area, the average groundwater levels, and a clogging correction factor. Two analytical formulas to compute infiltration from small dams and dykes were tested. The resulting volume of unintentional recharge from transverse structures ranges between 812.5 and 2716.6 Mm3/year. The comparison against regional and national water balances suggests that the lowest value of the range (i.e., 812.5 Mm3/year) is probably the most realistic. Anthropogenic recharge from MAR and transverse structures is likely in the range of 1012.5–1514.8 Mm3/year. This rough figure can help close the hydrological balance at the national and river basin levels and contribute to calibrating regional models. Furthermore, they provide an order of magnitude for anthropogenic recharge at a national scale, which is difficult to obtain. 814066
publications-2406 Peer reviewed articles 2023 AdriĂĄn LĂłpez-Ballesteros, Dennis Trolle, Raghavan Srinivasan, Javier Senent-Aparicio Assessing the effectiveness of potential best management practices for science-informed decision support at the watershed scale: The case of the Mar Menor coastal lagoon, Spain Science of the Total Environment 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.160144 AI & Machine Learning River Basins No abstract available 101017861
publications-2407 Peer reviewed articles 2023 Lin, S., Pierson, D. C., & Mesman, J. P. Prediction of algal blooms via data-driven machine learning models: an evaluation using data from a well-monitored mesotrophic lake. Geoscientific Model Development 10.5194/gmd-16-35-2023 Data Management & Analytics River Basins Abstract. With increasing lake monitoring data, data-driven machine learning (ML) models might be able to capture the complex algal bloom dynamics that cannot be completely described in process-based (PB) models. We applied two ML models, the gradient boost regressor (GBR) and long short-term memory (LSTM) network, to predict algal blooms and seasonal changes in algal chlorophyll concentrations (Chl) in a mesotrophic lake. Three predictive workflows were tested, one based solely on available measurements and the others applying a two-step approach, first estimating lake nutrients that have limited observations and then predicting Chl using observed and pre-generated environmental factors. The third workflow was developed using hydrodynamic data derived from a PB model as additional training features in the two-step ML approach. The performance of the ML models was superior to a PB model in predicting nutrients and Chl. The hybrid model further improved the prediction of the timing and magnitude of algal blooms. A data sparsity test based on shuffling the order of training and testing years showed the accuracy of ML models decreased with increasing sample interval, and model performance varied with training–testing year combinations. 101017861
publications-2408 Peer reviewed articles 2023 AdriĂĄn LĂłpez-Ballesteros, Anders Nielsen, Gerardo Castellanos-Osorio, Dennis Trolle, Javier Senent-Aparicio DSOLMap, a novel high-resolution global digital soil property map for the SWAT+ model: Development and hydrological evaluation Catena 10.1016/j.catena.2023.107339 Simulation & Modeling River Basins No abstract available 101017861
publications-2409 Peer reviewed articles 2023 Pablo Blanco-GĂłmez, Constancio Amurrio-Garcia, JosĂ© Luis JimĂ©nez-GarcĂ­a, Jose M. Cecilia CPR Algorithm—A new interpolation methodology and QGIS plugin for Colour Pattern Regression between aerial images and raster maps SoftwareX 10.1016/j.softx.2023.101356 Simulation & Modeling River Basins No abstract available 101017861
publications-2410 Peer reviewed articles 2022 Pablo Blanco-Gómez, José Luis Jiménez-García, Jose M. Cecilia Low-cost automated GPS, electrical conductivity and temperature sensing device (EC + T Track) and Android platform for water quality monitoring campaigns HardwareX 10.1016/j.ohx.2022.e00381 Simulation & Modeling Irrigation Systems No abstract available 101017861