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Review on groundwater recharge in carbonate aquifers from SW Mediterranean (Betic Cordillera, S Spain)

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Abstract

This paper presents a review of groundwater recharge assessment in some 50 carbonate aquifers of the extreme SW Mediterranean domain (Betic Cordillera, southern Spain), an area highly vulnerable to climate change. The selected aquifers represent a broad range of meteorological and geological conditions, and consequently results can be expanded eastward to other Mediterranean aquifers. The methods most commonly applied for recharge assessment over the past 20 years are aquifer water budget and soil water balance. While these methods support the first steps in groundwater management in Spain, precision in quantification requires other methods to be incorporated. They include chloride mass balance, diverse lumped model codes and empirical methods such as APLIS. In eastern areas of the Betic Cordillera, where semiarid conditions prevail, lumped and distributed models for recharge assessment and calibration are based on the time series of water table data. The mean annual rainfall, recharge and coefficient infiltration (as percentage of rainfall) are, respectively, 648, 262 mm/year and 38 %. A high correlation was observed between annual rainfall and annual recharge in all the studied aquifers. However, the infiltration coefficient can vary substantially even with the same annual rainfall recharge. This reflects significant differences in the degree of surface karstification and the development of the vegetal cover–soil–epikarst system in the carbonate aquifers of the Betic Cordillera. The results of this work may serve to improve the assessment and management of renewable water resources in western Mediterranean carbonate aquifers. The findings are moreover useful for future comparisons involving recharge assessments under different scenarios of climate change and changes in land use.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is a result of the “Advanced Hydrogeologic Studies” partnership between the Spanish Geological Survey (IGME) and the Centre of Hydrogeology at the University of Málaga (CEHIUMA). It is part of projects CGL-2010-15498, CGL2012-05427 and CGL2012-32590 of DGICYT and IGCP 598 of UNESCO, and the Research Groups RNM-126 and 308 of the Andalusian Government. We thank Jean Sanders who revised the English style. Finally, we would like to thank the contribution of the anonymous reviewers, who helped in improving the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geological Survey of Spain (IGME), C/Ríos Rosas, 23, Madrid, Spain

    S. Martos-Rosillo, A. González-Ramón & J. J. Durán

  2. Faculty of Sciences, Department of Geology and Centre of Hydrogeology at the University of Málaga (CEHIUMA), Campus de Teatinos, 29071, Málaga, Spain

    P. Jiménez-Gavilán, B. Andreo & E. Mancera

Authors
  1. S. Martos-Rosillo
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  2. A. González-Ramón
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  3. P. Jiménez-Gavilán
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  5. J. J. Durán
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  6. E. Mancera
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Correspondence to P. Jiménez-Gavilán.

Appendix

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Table 2 Values of recharge estimated using a variety of methods
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Martos-Rosillo, S., González-Ramón, A., Jiménez-Gavilán, P. et al. Review on groundwater recharge in carbonate aquifers from SW Mediterranean (Betic Cordillera, S Spain). Environ Earth Sci 74, 7571–7581 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-015-4673-3

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