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Geosciences
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Earth Observations to Support the Management of Groundwater Level Changes...
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Earth Observations to Support the Management of Groundwater Level Changes Impacts

A special issue of Geosciences (ISSN 2076-3263). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydrogeology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2018) | Viewed by 25367

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Claudia Meisina

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Pavia, Via Adolfo Ferrata 1, 27100 Pavia, Italy
Interests: engineering geological mapping; hazard assessment (subsidence, landslide, liquefaction); geological interpretation of satellite interferometric data
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Roberta Bonì

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Pure and Applied Sciences, University of Urbino “Carlo Bo”, Urbino, Italy
Interests: engineering geology; remote sensing; landslides; land subsidence; InSAR; monitoring; modelling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The goal of this Special Issue of Geosciences is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) to give insights regarding the exploitation of Earth Observations (EO) to support the management of the groundwater levels changes impacts.

A challenge to the scientific community is sustainable groundwater management, representing one of humanity’s priorities. Groundwater deficits may trigger compaction of aquifers resulting in land subsidence. This phenomenon can impact food security, natural heritage, structures and infrastructure safety, affect human life and activities, and it can induce nonrecoverable losses in an aquifer’s capability of storing water for future generations. Furthermore, uplift and seasonal movements can also be observed in response to groundwater level changes following the cessation of mine water pumping, or climatic drivers.

Earth observations, including SAR approaches, such as single-image and multi-temporal processing algorithms, gravity measurements, optical, multi/hyper-spectral, thermal imaging, aerial photography, and UAVs, represent powerful tools for the geoscience community to investigate groundwater level change impacts at the local and global scale, with unprecedented spatio-temporal resolutions.

Authors are encouraged to submit articles about innovative research or case studies focused on the detection, characterization and modelling of ground motion (land subsidence, uplift and seasonal movements) due to groundwater level changes. Studies with integrated Earth observations, to support the management of groundwater level change impacts, are especially welcome.

If authors are interested in submitting a manuscript, pre-submission communication with the Guest Editors is recommended, in order to verify that the contribution fits with the Special Issue topics.

Associate Professor Claudia Meisina
Dr. Roberta Bonì
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Geosciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Groundwater level changes
  • Land subsidence
  • Uplift
  • Seasonal movements
  • Earth Observation
  • InSAR, A-DInSAR
  • UAV
  • Groundwater storage
  • Mining activities
  • Natural and human induced hazards
  • Modelling

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 4618 KiB  
Article
Monitoring Groundwater Change in California’s Central Valley Using Sentinel-1 and GRACE Observations
by Zhen Liu, Pang-Wei Liu, Elias Massoud, Tom G Farr, Paul Lundgren and James S. Famiglietti
Geosciences 2019, 9(10), 436; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences9100436 - 09 Oct 2019
Cited by 49 | Viewed by 6838
Abstract
The San Joaquin Valley and Tulare basins in California’s Central Valley have intensive agricultural activity and groundwater demand that has caused significant subsidence and depletion of water resources in the past. We measured groundwater pumping-induced land subsidence in the southern Central Valley from [...] Read more.
The San Joaquin Valley and Tulare basins in California’s Central Valley have intensive agricultural activity and groundwater demand that has caused significant subsidence and depletion of water resources in the past. We measured groundwater pumping-induced land subsidence in the southern Central Valley from March 2015 to May 2017 using Sentinel-1 interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data. The InSAR measurements provided fine spatial details of subsidence patterns and displayed a superposition of secular and seasonal variations that were coherent across our study region and correlated with precipitation variability and changes in freshwater demand. Combining InSAR and Global Positioning System (GPS) data, precipitation, and in situ well records showed a broad scale slowdown/cessation of long term subsidence in the wetter winter of 2017, likely reflecting the collective response of the Central Valley aquifer system to heavier-than-usual precipitation. We observed a very good temporal correlation between the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite groundwater anomaly (GWA) variation and long-term subsidence records, regardless of local hydrogeology and mechanical properties. This indicates the subsidence from satellite geodesy is a very useful indicator for tracking groundwater storage change. With the continuing acquisition of Sentinel-1 and other satellites, we anticipate decadal-scale subsidence records with a spatial resolution of tens to hundreds of meters will be available in the near future to be combined with basin-averaged GRACE measurements to improve our estimate of time-varying groundwater change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Earth Observations to Support the Management of Groundwater Level Changes Impacts)
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19 pages, 4159 KiB  
Article
Groundwater Level Change Management on Control of Land Subsidence Supported by Borehole Extensometer Compaction Measurements in the Houston-Galveston Region, Texas
by Yi Liu, Jiang Li and Zheng N. Fang
Geosciences 2019, 9(5), 223; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences9050223 - 15 May 2019
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 5278
Abstract
As much as 3.05 m of land subsidence was observed in 1979 in the Houston-Galveston region as a result primarily of inelastic compaction of aquitards in the Chicot and Evangeline aquifers between 1937 and 1979. The preconsolidation pressure heads for aquitards within these [...] Read more.
As much as 3.05 m of land subsidence was observed in 1979 in the Houston-Galveston region as a result primarily of inelastic compaction of aquitards in the Chicot and Evangeline aquifers between 1937 and 1979. The preconsolidation pressure heads for aquitards within these two aquifers were continuously updated in response to lowering groundwater levels, which in turn was caused by continuously increasing groundwater withdrawal rates from 0.57 to 4.28 million m3/day. This land subsidence occurred without any management of changes in groundwater levels. However, the management of recovering groundwater levels from 1979 to 2000 successfully decreased inelastic compaction from about 40 mm/yr in the early 1980s to zero around 2000 through decreasing groundwater withdrawal rates from 4.3 to 3.0 million m3/day. The inelastic consolidation that had existed for about 63 years roughly from 1937 to 2000 caused a land subsidence hazard in this region. Some rebounding of the land surface was achieved from groundwater level recovering management. It is found in this paper that subsidence of 0.08 to 8.49 mm/yr owing to a pseudo-constant secondary consolidation rate emerged or tended to emerge at 13 borehole extensometer station locations while the groundwater levels in the two aquifers were being managed. It is considered to remain stable in trend since 2000. The subsidence due to the secondary consolidation is beyond the control of any groundwater level change management schemes because it is caused by geo-historical overburden pressure on the two aquifers. The compaction measurements collected from the 13 extensometers since 1971 not only successfully corroborate the need for groundwater level change management in controlling land subsidence but also yield the first empirical findings of the occurrence of secondary consolidation subsidence in the Quaternary and Tertiary aquifer systems in the Houston-Galveston region. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Earth Observations to Support the Management of Groundwater Level Changes Impacts)
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15 pages, 15798 KiB  
Article
Uplift Evidences Related to the Recession of Groundwater Abstraction in a Pyroclastic-Alluvial Aquifer of Southern Italy
by Silvio Coda, Pierluigi Confuorto, Pantaleone De Vita, Diego Di Martire and Vincenzo Allocca
Geosciences 2019, 9(5), 215; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences9050215 - 11 May 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3103
Abstract
Aquifer mismanagement is a common anthropogenic cause of subsidence and uplift phenomena in alluvial plains, representing one of the main natural hazards in urban areas due to related damage to urban structures and infrastructures. In this work, the groundwater rebound phenomenon that occurred [...] Read more.
Aquifer mismanagement is a common anthropogenic cause of subsidence and uplift phenomena in alluvial plains, representing one of the main natural hazards in urban areas due to related damage to urban structures and infrastructures. In this work, the groundwater rebound phenomenon that occurred in the last decades of the 20th century in the Lufrano area (Metropolitan area of Naples, Southern Italy) has been studied by integrating geological data, hydrogeological continuous monitoring and spaceborne SAR information derived from ERS-1/2 and ENVISAT satellites. In the period of 1989–2006, the Lufrano area, which hosts an important well field made up of 180 wells extracting groundwater for drinking use, suffered an initial over-exploitation of the aquifer which was followed by a sudden and severe decrease of the volume abstraction, resulting this last in a rapid ground uplift. The coupled analysis of hydrogeological and DInSAR data have shown a correspondence between piezometric level rise (up to 15 m) and ground uplift (up to 50 mm) trends in the period 1989–2006. In order to examine the spatio-temporal evolution of the phenomena and the cause-effect relationships, showing the link between the two phenomena and their rates, longitudinal cross-sections were carried out and comparisons between piezometric level rise and time-series of displacements were reconstructed. The obtained results represent an initial contribution to the definition of ground deformation related to groundwater level rise phenomena, providing a basis for future studies focused on the modelling of the hydro-mechanical properties of the aquifer. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Earth Observations to Support the Management of Groundwater Level Changes Impacts)
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14 pages, 2309 KiB  
Article
Estimating Groundwater Abstractions at the Aquifer Scale Using GRACE Observations
by Alexandra Gemitzi and Venkat Lakshmi
Geosciences 2018, 8(11), 419; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences8110419 - 14 Nov 2018
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3520
Abstract
Groundwater monitoring requires costly in situ networks, which are difficult to maintain over long time periods, especially in countries facing economic recession such as Greece. Our work aims at providing a methodology to estimate groundwater abstractions at the aquifer scale using publicly available [...] Read more.
Groundwater monitoring requires costly in situ networks, which are difficult to maintain over long time periods, especially in countries facing economic recession such as Greece. Our work aims at providing a methodology to estimate groundwater abstractions at the aquifer scale using publicly available remotely sensed data from the NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) together with publicly available meteorological observations that serve as input variables to an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) method. The methodology was demonstrated in an alluvial aquifer in NE Greece for a 10-year period (2005–2014), where irrigation agriculture poses a serious threat to both groundwater resources and their dependent ecosystems. To generalize the developed model, an ensemble of 100 ANNs was created by the initial weight randomization approach and output was computed by averaging the output of each individual model. Scaled Root Mean Square Error and Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient were used to test the model efficiency. Both of these performance metrics indicated that monthly groundwater abstractions can be estimated efficiently and that the developed methodology offers an inexpensive substitute for in situ groundwater monitoring when in situ networks are not available or cannot operate properly. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Earth Observations to Support the Management of Groundwater Level Changes Impacts)
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22 pages, 52606 KiB  
Article
Landslides and Subsidence Assessment in the Crati Valley (Southern Italy) Using InSAR Data
by Giuseppe Cianflone, Cristiano Tolomei, Carlo Alberto Brunori, Stephen Monna and Rocco Dominici
Geosciences 2018, 8(2), 67; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences8020067 - 10 Feb 2018
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 5754
Abstract
In this work, we map surficial ground deformations that occurred during the years 2004–2010 in the Crati Valley (Southern Italy). The valley is in one of the most seismically active regions of the Italian peninsula, and presents slope instability and widespread landslide phenomena. [...] Read more.
In this work, we map surficial ground deformations that occurred during the years 2004–2010 in the Crati Valley (Southern Italy). The valley is in one of the most seismically active regions of the Italian peninsula, and presents slope instability and widespread landslide phenomena. We measured ground deformations by applying the small baseline subset (SBAS) technique, a multi-temporal synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) methodology that is used to process datasets of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. Ground displacements are only partially visible with the InSAR technique. Visibility depends on the geometry of the acquisition layout, such as the radar acquisition angle view, and the land use. These two factors determine the backscattering of the reflected signal. Most of the ground deformation detected by InSAR can be attributed to the gravitational mass movements of the hillslopes (i.e., landslides), and the subsidence of the quaternary deposits filling the valley. The movements observed along the valley slopes were compared with the available landslide catalog. We also identified another cause of movement in this area, i.e., ground subsidence due to the compaction of the quaternary deposits filling the valley. This compaction can be ascribed to various sources, such as urban population growth and sprawl, industrial water withdrawal, and tectonic activity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Earth Observations to Support the Management of Groundwater Level Changes Impacts)
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