Influence of intensive agriculture and geological heterogeneity on the recharge of an arid aquifer system (Saq-Ram, Arabian Peninsula) inferred from GRACE data - Centre Européen de Recherche et d'Enseignement des Géosciences de l'Environnement Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Année : 2022

Influence of intensive agriculture and geological heterogeneity on the recharge of an arid aquifer system (Saq-Ram, Arabian Peninsula) inferred from GRACE data

Résumé

This study assesses the detailed water budget of the Saq-Ram Aquifer System (520 000 km2) over the 2002-2019 period using satellite gravity data from the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE). The three existing GRACE solutions were tested for their local compatibility to compute groundwater storage (GWS) variations in combination with the three soil moisture datasets available from the land surface models (LSMs) of the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS). Accounting for groundwater pumping, artificial recharge, and natural discharge uniformly distributed over the Saq-Ram domain, the GRACE-derived mass balance calculation for water yields a long-term estimate of the domain-averaged natural recharge of (2.4±1.4) mm yr−1, corresponding to (4.4±2.6) % of the annual average rainfall (AAR).

Beyond the regional-scale approach proposed here, spatial heterogeneities regarding the groundwater recharge were identified. The first source of heterogeneity is of anthropogenic origin: chiefly induced by irrigation excess over irrigated surfaces (about 1 % of the domain), artificial recharge corresponds to half of the total recharge of the aquifer. The second source of recharge heterogeneity identified here is natural: volcanic lava deposits (called harrats on the Arabian Peninsula) which cover 8 % of the Saq-Ram aquifer domain but contribute to more than 50 % of the natural recharge. Hence, in addition to this application on the Arabian Peninsula, this study strongly indicates a major control of geological context on arid aquifer recharge, which has been poorly discussed hitherto.

Due to large lag times of the diffuse recharge mechanism, the annual analysis using this GRACE-GLDAS approach in arid domains should be limited to areas where focused recharge is the main mechanism, while long-term analysis is valid regardless of the recharge mechanism. Moreover, it appears that about 15 years of GRACE records are required to obtain a relevant long-term recharge estimate.

Domaines

Hydrologie
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
hess-26-5757-2022.pdf (2.78 Mo) Télécharger le fichier
Origine : Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte

Dates et versions

hal-03948305 , version 1 (20-01-2023)

Identifiants

Citer

Pierre Séraphin, Julio Gonçalvès, Bruno Hamelin, Thomas Stieglitz, Pierre Deschamps. Influence of intensive agriculture and geological heterogeneity on the recharge of an arid aquifer system (Saq-Ram, Arabian Peninsula) inferred from GRACE data. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 2022, 26 (22), pp.5757-5771. ⟨10.5194/hess-26-5757-2022⟩. ⟨hal-03948305⟩
54 Consultations
18 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More