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A combined methodology to assess the intrinsic vulnerability of aquifers to pollution from agrochemicals

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Abstract

The groundwater vulnerability indices are valuable tools for the development of agrochemicals management strategies based on environmental/agricultural policies. The groundwater vulnerability methods of LOS, SINTACS, DRASTIC, Pesticide DRASTIC, GOD and AVI were applied for the agricultural fields of Sarigkiol basin (Northern Greece). The results of the aforementioned methods were examined and discussed in order to show how the dissimilarities in the vulnerability assessment approaches may become an advantage. The results of the methods were used to propose a combined conceptual approach which adds another two dimensions (depth and time) in the current two-dimensional vulnerability mapping (longitude, latitude) procedures. The LOS method provided information about the intrinsic vulnerability of the topsoil (30 cm) to water (+conservative pollutants) and nitrogen losses, and the AVI method described the vulnerability of the unsaturated zone to allow pollutants to reach the aquifer while the aquifer vulnerability was analysed using SINTACS, DRASTIC, Pesticide DRASTIC and GOD. In this study, the results of the SINTACS method were found more accurate to describe the local aquifer conditions. The final conceptual approach provided a stratified vulnerability (dimension of depth) of the overall hydrogeologic system using LOS for the topsoil, AVI for unsaturated zone and SINTACS for the aquifer. The dimension of time was introduced by the LOS and AVI methods, which provide quantitative results in time. The use of LOS method also highlighted the basic limitation of the other methods to describe the potential contribution to pollution of areas (especially upland areas) which are out of the aquifer boundaries.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer and to Professor Biswajeet Pradhan for their valuable comments and suggestions. The work presented in this paper was financially supported by the European Union, within EU.WATER project ‘Transnational integrated management of water resources in agriculture for the EUropean WATER emergency control’, of the South East Europe Programme (contract n. SEE/A/165/2.1/X).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, University of Ferrara, Via L. Borsari 46, 44121, Ferrara, Italy

    Vassilis G. Aschonitis & Giuseppe Castaldelli

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, “Sapienza” University of Rome, P.le A. Moro 5, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Nicolò Colombani

  3. Department of Environmental, Biological and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies, Second University of Naples, Via Vivaldi 43, 81100, Caserta, Italy

    Micòl Mastrocicco

Authors
  1. Vassilis G. Aschonitis
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  2. Giuseppe Castaldelli
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  3. Nicolò Colombani
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  4. Micòl Mastrocicco
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicolò Colombani.

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Aschonitis, V.G., Castaldelli, G., Colombani, N. et al. A combined methodology to assess the intrinsic vulnerability of aquifers to pollution from agrochemicals. Arab J Geosci 9, 503 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-016-2527-2

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