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Towards Sustainable Surface Water–Groundwater Management: Advances in Water Resources Monitoring and Modeling

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Water Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 July 2023) | Viewed by 7039

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Ahmed S. Elshall

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4520, USA
Interests: groundwater sustainability; groundwater role in climate change mitigation and adaptation; surface water - groundwater interaction; integrated water resources modeling; flood - managed aquifer recharge; managing complex socio-ecological systems
Dr. Olkeba Tolessa Leta

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Bureau of Watershed Management and Modeling, St. Johns River Water Management District, (SJRWMD), 4049 Reid St, Palatka, FL 32177, USA
Interests: watershed hydrology; hydrologic processes modeling; sensitivity and uncertainty analysis; minimum flows and levels; climate change impacts; water resources availability/sustainability; GIS/remote sensing applications

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The extensive environmental and social impacts due to the decline of water levels and water quality are drawing more attention to water resources sustainability and major policy reforms worldwide [1–3]. Ensuring water resources sustainability requires an integrated approach that addresses (1) natural water systems including water quantity, quality, surface water - groundwater dependent ecosystems, and natural hazards and threats, (2) infrastructure system including facility and technologies, (3) institutional system including legal and institutional constraints, and (4) socioeconomic system including societal values and preferences, and economic feasibility.  Evaluating water resources sustainability involves multi-process description and modeling of surface water – groundwater system, surface water – groundwater dependent ecosystems, and human activities (e.g., agriculture) in a participatory framework with stakeholders. Broad uncertainty analysis is generally required to account for natural and societal uncertainties including conflicting societal preferences. Management solutions such as flood-managed aquifer recharge, conjugate use, water recycling, monitored natural attenuation, and public awareness programs are adopted.  Yet lack of data and information can be a major challenge particularly in developing countries, and thus environmental monitoring and advanced modeling tools have major roles in ensuring sustainable management of water resources. To advance the science and practice of water resources sustainability, this special issue welcomes contributions that are based on theory, observations, modeling, or/and hydroinformatics to characterize and manage water resources under uncertainty in a participatory water governance framework. Contributions addressing the role of environmental monitoring and modeling advancement in sustainable water resources management are particularly welcomed. 

With focus on water resources sustainability, topics of interest include but are not limited to:

  • Justice and equity issues in water resources management and environmental monitoring
  • The role of participation in sustainable water resources management and environmental monitoring including participatory modeling with stakeholders, and environmental monitoring based on stakeholder needs  
  • The role of water resources sustainability in climate change mitigation and adaptation, and how climate change is addressed in water resources sustainability evaluation including environmental monitoring needs for sustainable water resources management 
  • The contribution of digital transformation and hydroinformatics to sustainable water resources management and environmental monitoring including methods and technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning, big data, digital twining, do-it-yourself and internet-of-things based sensors, web-based platforms, and data networks
  • Policy and water governance issues related to water resources sustainability including how scientific understanding, new technologies, and monitoring data influence policy development and adjustment 
  • Education and outreach activities related to water resources sustainability and environmental monitoring

Research, review, and opinion articles that reflect on water resources sustainability and environmental monitoring and modeling at different scales, climate regions, and cultures are welcome. 

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References

  1. Elshall, A.S.; Arik, A.D.; El-Kadi, A.I..; Pierce, S.; Ye, M.; Burnett, K.K.; Wada, C.; Bremer, L.L.; Chun, G. Groundwater Sustainability: A Review of the Interactions between Science and Policy. Environmental Research Letters 2020, doi:https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab8e8c.
  2. Gleeson, T.; Cuthbert, M.; Ferguson, G.; Perrone, D. Global Groundwater Sustainability, Resources, and Systems in the Anthropocene. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 2020, 48, doi:10.1146/annurev-earth-071719-055251.
  3. Lall, U.; Josset, L.; Russo, T. A Snapshot of the World’s Groundwater Challenges. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 2020, 45, 171–194, doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-102017-025800.

Dr. Ahmed S. Elshall
Dr. Olkeba Tolessa Leta
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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2400 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

  • broad uncertainty analysis
  • climate change
  • groundwater dependent ecosystems and ecosystem services
  • groundwater sustainability and sustainable water resources management
  • integrated water resources modeling and multi-process modeling
  • science policy interface
  • surface water - groundwater interaction
  • stakeholder participation and participatory modeling
  • water resources governance

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 10780 KiB  
Article
Metamodelling of Naturalised Groundwater Levels at a Regional Level in New Zealand
by Jing Yang, Channa Rajanayaka, Christopher J. Daughney, Doug Booker, Rebecca Morris and Mike Thompson
Sustainability 2023, 15(18), 13393; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151813393 - 07 Sep 2023
Viewed by 580
Abstract
Groundwater is under pressure from increasing demands for agriculture, industry, domestic uses and support of ecosystems. Understanding the natural state of a groundwater system helps policy makers manage groundwater sustainably. Here we developed a metamodelling approach based on stepwise linear regression that emulates [...] Read more.
Groundwater is under pressure from increasing demands for agriculture, industry, domestic uses and support of ecosystems. Understanding the natural state of a groundwater system helps policy makers manage groundwater sustainably. Here we developed a metamodelling approach based on stepwise linear regression that emulates the functionality of physically-based models in the three primary aquifers of the Greater Wellington region of New Zealand. The inputs for the metamodels included local weather data, and nearby river flow data. The metamodels were calibrated and validated against the available simulations of naturalised groundwater level time series from physically-based models for 47 selected wells. For 36 of these wells, the metamodels had Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency and coefficient of determination over 0.5, showing that they could adequately mimic naturalised groundwater level dynamics as simulated by the physically-based groundwater models. The remaining 11 wells had unsatisfactory performance and were typically located far away from rivers or along the coast. The results also showed that modelled groundwater levels in the aquifer’s recharge zone were more sensitive to short-term (less than 2 weeks lag) than long-term river flow (above 4 weeks to 1 year lag), whereas the converse pattern was observed for the aquifer’s discharge zone. Although some special considerations are needed, this metamodelling framework can be generally applied to other aquifers to support groundwater resource management at a lower cost than updating physically-based models. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Towards Sustainable Surface Water–Groundwater Management: Advances in Water Resources Monitoring and Modeling)
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20 pages, 7911 KiB  
Article
Parameterization of a National Groundwater Model for New Zealand
by James Griffiths, Jing Yang, Ross Woods, Christian Zammit, Rasool Porhemmat, Ude Shankar, Channa Rajanayaka, Jeffrey Ren and Nicholas Howden
Sustainability 2023, 15(17), 13280; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151713280 - 04 Sep 2023
Viewed by 830
Abstract
Groundwater is a vital source of water for humanity, with up to 50% of global drinking water and 43% of irrigation water being derived from such sources. Quantitative assessment and accounting of groundwater is essential to ensure its sustainable management and use. TopNet-GW [...] Read more.
Groundwater is a vital source of water for humanity, with up to 50% of global drinking water and 43% of irrigation water being derived from such sources. Quantitative assessment and accounting of groundwater is essential to ensure its sustainable management and use. TopNet-GW is a parsimonious groundwater model that was developed to provide groundwater simulation at national, regional, and local scales across New Zealand. At a national scale, the model can help local government authorities estimate groundwater resource reliability within and between regions. However, as many catchments are ungauged, the model cannot be calibrated to local conditions against observed data. This paper, therefore, describes a method to derive an a priori, reach-scale groundwater model parameter set from national-scale hydrogeological datasets. The parameter set includes coefficients of lateral (kl) and vertical (kr) conductivity and effective aquifer storage (S). When the parameter set was used with the TopNet-GW model in the Wairau catchment in the Marlborough region (South Island, New Zealand), it produced a poor representation of peak river flows but a more accurate representation of low flows (overall NSE 0.64). The model performance decreased in the smaller Opawa catchment (NSE 0.39). It is concluded that the developed a priori parameter set can be used to provide national groundwater modeling capability in ungauged catchments but should be used with caution, and model performance would benefit greatly from local scale calibration. The parameter derivation method is repeatable globally if analogous hydrological and geological information is available and thus provides a basis for the parameterization of groundwater models in ungauged catchments. Future research will assess the spatial variability of parameter performance at a national scale in New Zealand. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Towards Sustainable Surface Water–Groundwater Management: Advances in Water Resources Monitoring and Modeling)
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23 pages, 13409 KiB  
Article
Groundwater Modeling to Assess Climate Change Impacts and Sustainability in the Tana Basin, Upper Blue Nile, Ethiopia
by Fahad Khan Khadim, Zoi Dokou, Rehenuma Lazin, Amvrossios C. Bagtzoglou and Emmanouil Anagnostou
Sustainability 2023, 15(7), 6284; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15076284 - 06 Apr 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1628
Abstract
Climate change effects on long-term groundwater (GW) resource developments in the Tana Basin, Ethiopia, are a growing concern. Efforts to provide estimates under various climatic uncertainties are lacking in the region. To address this need, we deployed a fine-resolution (500 m) GW model [...] Read more.
Climate change effects on long-term groundwater (GW) resource developments in the Tana Basin, Ethiopia, are a growing concern. Efforts to provide estimates under various climatic uncertainties are lacking in the region. To address this need, we deployed a fine-resolution (500 m) GW model using MODFLOW-NWT for the Tana Basin, Upper the Blue Nile region. The GW model was calibrated based on 98 historical instantaneous well-level measurements (RMSE = 16.36 m, 1.6% of range), and 38 years of monthly lake level data (RMSE = 0.2 m, 6.7% of range). We used the model to simulate long-term climate change impacts by considering two representative concentration pathways, (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5, from the two extreme global circulation models (MIROC5 for wetter conditions and CSIRO-Mk3 for drier conditions) available in the region. While the MIROC5 simulated GW table (GWT) was found to be stable, the CSIRO-Mk3 simulated GWT exhibited large fluctuations within +2 m to −4 m by 2100 due to climate change. More critical impacts were predicted for the lake, where total lake releases from the baseline scenario were foreseen to be changed by +50% (MIROC5) or −22% (CSIRO-Mk3) by the end of 2100. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Towards Sustainable Surface Water–Groundwater Management: Advances in Water Resources Monitoring and Modeling)
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18 pages, 6300 KiB  
Article
Pumping-Induced Feed Water Quality Variation and Its Impacts on the Sustainable Operation of a Brackish Water Reverse Osmosis Desalination Plant, City of Hialeah, Florida, USA
by Zoie R. Kassis, Weixing Guo, Robert G. Maliva, W. Scott Manahan, Rachel Rotz and Thomas M. Missimer
Sustainability 2023, 15(6), 4713; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15064713 - 07 Mar 2023
Viewed by 907
Abstract
Brackish water reverse osmosis (BWRO) desalination of groundwater is believed to be a sustainable method of providing municipal utilities with a high-quality supply in regions where freshwater sources are stressed and not sustainable. A key aspect of water management is the ability to [...] Read more.
Brackish water reverse osmosis (BWRO) desalination of groundwater is believed to be a sustainable method of providing municipal utilities with a high-quality supply in regions where freshwater sources are stressed and not sustainable. A key aspect of water management is the ability to evaluate an aquifer containing brackish water to ascertain future pumping-induced water quality changes and their impacts on the facility operation and economics. The city of Hialeah, Florida, has operated a BWRO facility for the last 9 years. The facility has a maximum design capacity of about 88,000 m3/d but is currently operating at about 33,000 m3/d. The facility was designed to treat water with a TDS of up to 10,000 mg/L. A detailed hydrogeologic investigation, including groundwater solute-transport modeling, suggested that the salinity of the source water would remain under 10,000 mg/L of TDS during the 30-year life expectancy of the facility. However, after 9 years of operation, it was found that the rate of salinity increase was much higher than predicted (27.5%), at the low rate of 33,000 m3/d. If the faculty was operated at the maximum capacity, the ability of the plant to treat the source water might be between 5 and 10 years. The conceptual model used to guide the solute transport modeling was not accurate for this site because it did not incorporate the apparent enhanced leakance through the basal confining unit below the aquifer. The greater leakance was likely caused by undetected, irregularly distributed fracturing of the underlying confining dolostones. The facility will require a major redesign to upgrade the process to be able to treat seawater at a TDS significantly above 10,000 mg/L in the future, should that occur. While the change will be costly, with a high capital cost to change the process, increased energy consumption, and overall higher water treatment cost, it is still more sustainable and has less environmental impact compared to other alternatives (e.g., treating tidal sources of seawater). The use of electricity from nuclear or solar generation could mitigate the environmental impacts of higher power consumption. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Towards Sustainable Surface Water–Groundwater Management: Advances in Water Resources Monitoring and Modeling)
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17 pages, 2931 KiB  
Article
Response of Winter Wheat Production to Climate Change in Ziway Lake Basin
by Aster Tesfaye Hordofa, Olkeba Tolessa Leta, Tena Alamirew and Abebe Demissie Chukalla
Sustainability 2022, 14(20), 13666; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142013666 - 21 Oct 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2001
Abstract
The crop production and limited freshwater resources in the Central Rift Valley (CRV) Lake Basin of Ethiopia have been facing pressure from warmer and drier climates. Thus, irrigation with the goal of increasing water use efficiency and the productivity of rainfed agriculture is [...] Read more.
The crop production and limited freshwater resources in the Central Rift Valley (CRV) Lake Basin of Ethiopia have been facing pressure from warmer and drier climates. Thus, irrigation with the goal of increasing water use efficiency and the productivity of rainfed agriculture is vital to address climate effects, water scarcity, and food security. This study is aimed at assessing the sustainability of winter wheat production under climate change, and irrigation as an adaptation measure to improve yield, crop water productivity (CWP), and irrigation water productivity (IWP) in the CRV of Ethiopia. AquaCrop is applied to evaluate the effects of climate change and simulate irrigation as an adaptation measure. The analysis covers the baseline (1981–2020) and future (2026–2095) periods with each period categorized into three rainfall years (wet, normal, and dry). The future period is described using two representatives’ concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and PCP8.5) scenarios. The results under rainfed and future climate conditions show that the winter wheat yield and CWP are projected to be lowered as compared to the baseline period. Most importantly, a significant reduction in wheat yield and CWP is noticed during the dry years (−60% and −80%) compared to the wet years (−30% and −51%) and normal years (−18% and −30%), respectively. As compared to rainfed agriculture, irrigation significantly reduces the risk of wheat yield decline and improves the CWP. Irrigation is also able to improve the CWP of rainfed wheat production ranging from 0.98–1.4 kg/m3 to 1.48–1.56 kg/m3. A projected CWP improvement of 1.1–1.32 kg/m3 under irrigation is possible from 0.87–1.1 kg/m3 under rainfed conditions. The study concludes that optimizing irrigation as a climate-change-adapting strategy in the CRV has a more pronounced positive impact to the rainfed production system, especially for the dry and normal years. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Towards Sustainable Surface Water–Groundwater Management: Advances in Water Resources Monitoring and Modeling)
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