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Urban groundwater warming in Turin area (NW Italy)
Arianna Bucci (a), Diego Barbero (b), Manuela Lasagna (c), Maria Gabriella Forno (c) & Domenico Antonio De Luca (c)
(a) Geodata Engineering S.p.A. Corso Bolzano 14 10121 Turin (Italy).
(b) Freelance Geologist.
(c) Department of Earth Sciences, University of Turin, via Valperga Caluso, 35, 10125, Turin, Italy.
Corresponding author e-mail: arianna.bucci@unito.it Document type: Short note.
Manuscript submitted 29 June 2017; accepted 19 December 2017; editorial responsibility and handling by C. Meisina and S. Da Pelo.
ABSTRACT
This study investigated the thermal regime of shallow groundwater in the Turin area (NW Italy), where the large energy demand has driven a new interest for ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs). The strongest vertical variability of groundwater temperature is found within 10-20 m below ground surface. In spring, deeper temperatures are higher than shallow temperatures, while in autumn the trend is reversed.
These variations are connected with the heating and cooling cycles of the ground surface due to seasonal air temperature oscillation, propagating into the aquifer.
The areal temperature distribution shows an increase from the foothill sectors close to the Alps towards the central Po Plain, driven by the progressive warming along the flow path. In the Turin city aquifer temperatures are 0.6 ÷1.6 °C higher than rural sectors. This groundwater warming is linked to the urban heat island effect, mainly driven by the typical artificial land use. Sparse warmer outliers (16-20
°C) are in some cases connected to documented point heat sources, such as GSHP systems, industrial districts and landfills.
KEY WORDS: groundwater temperature, seasonal oscillation, anthropogenic heat sources, ground-source heat pumps.
INTRODUCTION
As many other countries in Europe, Italy is trying to reduce its dependence to non-renewable fossil fuels. NW Italy is one of the most densely populated and industrialized areas and concerns are rising for the great thermal energy demand, especially in its large conurbations (Turin, Milan).
Among the renewable sources, low temperature reservoirs are being increasingly regarded worldwide as promising thermal energy suppliers via the use of heat pumps. A similar trend has been characterizing Italy in the last decades:
geothermal heat pumps have doubled their contribution to the final consumption of renewable energies (EC, 2015).
In NW Italy the Po Plain is a very promising area for the large-scale dissemination of geothermal heat pumps:
the relatively thick alluvial body forming the plain hosts many productive groundwater systems, making possible the installations of geothermal heat pumps in the above mentioned cities (Sparacino et al., 2007; Baccino et al., 2010; Beretta et al., 2014; Alberti et al., 2017; Emmi et al., 2017; Piga et al., 2017).
The Turin area is located in such a favourable geological context, but it still lacks a city-scale thermal
characterization of aquifers. The present study thus investigated the temperatures of the shallow groundwater in the Turin area, considering both the urban and the rural areas adjacent to the city. Another reason to study the Turin case is that several studies, carried out in many cities worldwide, reveal an over-heating of urban shallow aquifers (Ferguson and Woodbury, 2004; Zhu et al., 2010;
Menberg et al., 2013; Benz et al., 2015).
STUDY AREA
The area investigated is located in Piedmont Region (NW Italy) and includes both the narrow sector of the western Po Plain between the Western Alps (W) and Turin Hill (E) and the internal plain sector of the Ivrea Morainic Amphitheatre. The regional climate is driven by the orographic component (ARPA 2007): air temperatures show a regular decrease with elevation in western direction towards the alpine chain and can be changed by local conditions, such as urban areas. The average annual temperature of Piedmont Po Plain ranges between 10°C and 12.5°C, with higher average monthly values in autumn than in spring (Table 1).
From a hydrogeological point of view, the Quaternary alluvial sediments of the Po Plain represent a continuous highly permeable porous medium that hosts many groundwater systems. Conventionally, one shallow and various deep aquifers have been described in Piedmont Region (Bortolami et al., 1988; Bove et al., 2005; De Luca et al., 2014; Lasagna and De Luca, 2017).The shallow aquifer, hosted in late Pleistocene and Holocene units, is mostly unconfined and supplied by the infiltration of rainfall and secondarily by rivers in the high plain sectors. Due to the mainly sandy–gravelly texture, many quarry activities are exploiting this complex (De Luca et al. 2007; Castagna et al. 2015a, 2015b). The maximum aquifer thickness is 50 m and the water table generally has depths between 1 and 50 metres below ground level, with minima located in the high plain sectors. In most of the wells (78%) the water table depth is found between 1 and 20 metres b.g.l. (Bucci et al., 2017). The low plain sectors, far from the Alpine chain, are generally discharge areas and the Po River represents
Author’s personal copy
URBAN GROUNDWATER WARMING IN TURIN AREA (NW ITALY) 3
TABLE 1
Monthly average temperature in Turin city (1961-1990)
(http://datimeteoasti.it/landamento-del-clima-a-torino-dal-settecento-a-oggi/).
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
T [°C] 2.8 5.1 9.2 13.4 16.9 21.1 23.3 22.8 18.6 13.6 7.5 3.9
the main regional discharge axis for the groundwater flow (Debernardi et al., 2008; Lasagna et al., 2016a, 2016b).
TEMPERATURE MODEL AND METHODS
The shallow subsurface temperature is mainly controlled by the temperature at the ground surface, which strictly depends on the local climate and on the land use conditions. The temperature temporal oscillation in the unsaturated zone, solved by a 1D heat diffusion model for a semi-infinite medium characterized by homogeneous properties and negligible vertical water movements (Banks, 2008; Taylor and Stephan, 2009), consists of an oscillating temperature around the average annual ground temperature. The fluctuations undergo a decay and an increasing time lag with depth. This means that longer temperature cycles -decades, centuries- are, the more they penetrate the subsurface, whereas the short cycles -days, months- but their amplitude is increasingly damped and lagged by the heat dissipation within the geologic medium.
The heat transfer processes become more complex when the ground temperature inputs reach the groundwater: the flow of the water in the porous medium, the inertial effects and eventual turbulence enlarge the apparent thermal diffusivity until it reaches several orders of magnitude greater than the molecular thermal diffusivity (Taylor
& Stephan 2009). This means an increased rate of heat transport due to hydrodynamic effects that are highlighted by distortions in borehole temperature logs.
The aquifer depth interval affected by temperature oscillations, known as the “surficial zone”, is generally 10 to 20 m deep; it is followed by the so-called “geothermal zone”, in which the geothermal gradient drives a constant increase in temperature (Anderson 2005). However, previous works in NW Po Plain alluvial aquifers (e.i. Barbero et al., 2016) revealed a “homoeothermic zone” with no temperature oscillations in time. The temperature below the surficial zone is usually 1 to 2 °C higher than the average annual temperature at the ground surface (Anderson 2005).
The mean annual average temperatures and the amplitude of temperature oscillations in the vadose zone and in the aquifers strictly depend also on the local land use: variations in reflectance and porosity of soil are able to influence the transmission of solar radiation and water infiltration. Consequently, temperatures are affected by anthropogenic elements found at ground surface: buildings, roads, paved surfaces and so on. The temperature rise varies depending on the type of element: for example, Taylor and Stefan (2009) observed increments of up to 3°C linked to isolated roads. The most evident thermal footprints occur beneath urban areas: Menberg et al. (2013) estimate a temperature difference between rural and urban areas
equal to +1.9 °C to +2.4 °C in some German cities. Warmer temperatures below cities are also linked to the global warming (Taniguchi et al., 2007; Bayer et al., 2016).
Thermal logs, the typical survey method for aquifer temperature detection (Taniguchi, 1993; Pasquale et al., 2011), were carried out throughout the water column of around 50 observation wells of Turin area, all wells are screened in the shallow aquifer. Temperature acquisition interval was 1 to 5 m (depth-wise increase) and an electronic water level metre equipped with a thermometer (±0.1 °C accuracy) was used. For assessing possible city- related effects, temperatures were collected in rural and urban (Turin city) sectors. A multi-temporal approach was used to detect the seasonal fluctuations. The largest part of the wells was surveyed in 2014 in a spring-autumn survey. In 2016 further observation points were added with measurement frequency equal to 1 month. The depths of monitored wells have the following ranges: <10 m (2.4%), 10 to 20 m (42.9%) and >20 m (54.7%).
According to the afore mentioned temperature model and to air temperatures, the maximum expected groundwater temperature below the surficial zone with climatic variations is between 12 and 14.5 °C in the Turin plain.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The most evident feature of the temperature profiles measured in the monitored wells of the area investigated is the vertical variability in the shallow portion of the aquifer, according to the afore mentioned models. The temperature delta along the water column of the well, obtained by the difference between top and bottom well temperature, indicates the warming/cooling of very shallow groundwater; as expected, the temperature variation along the well water column diminishes significantly with the depth of groundwater level (Fig. 1). This trend is season- driven: in spring deep values are higher than the shallow ones (ΔT<0), while in autumn a decrease of temperature with depth occurs (ΔT>0). Such depth and time variations are connected to the heating and cooling seasonal cycles of ground surface temperatures, propagating into the shallow portion of the aquifer. Furthermore, the seasonal amplitude reduction with increasing depths means that the vadose zone plays a major role in damping the oscillations, according to similar studies by Burns et al. (2016).
Underneath the seasonal oscillation zone, groundwater temperatures are approximately constant in most wells, according to Barbero et al. (2016): in Fig. 1, below 10 m the residual changes (less than ± 1 °C) can be connected to other processes, such as advective heat transport within the aquifer. Deviations from constant temperature in the thermal profiles can be read as either upward or downward
A. BUCCI ET AL.
4
water movements, in recharge and discharge areas, or as lithological heterogeneities in areas with nearly horizontal flow. The groundwater temperature in Turin plain, averaged on spring and autumn values extracted from Bucci et al.
(2017), is 14.1 °C, that is within the expected temperature range (see previous paragraph).
Lateral variations of aquifer temperature in autumn 2014 are displayed by plotting the bottom well temperatures, not affected by seasonal oscillations (Fig. 2), that were measured at the average depth of 25 m. There is a gradual groundwater warming from high plain sectors close to the Alps towards the Po River. This feature is consistent with the main groundwater flow direction, meaning that colder aquifer temperatures of recharge areas -due to colder air temperatures in high plain sectors- warm up during their pathway.
The second most evident feature is the high concentration of warm temperatures below the Turin city:
compared to rural values, the urban aquifer is 14-16 °C and rural aquifer is 12-14 °C. More precisely, the urban warming intensity can be calculated with the difference Fig. 1 - Correlation between groundwater temperatures and
temperature difference along water column of the monitored wells in 2014.
Fig. 2 - Temperatures of the shallow aquifer in autumn of 2014. *The values refer to the well bottom temperatures.
URBAN GROUNDWATER WARMING IN TURIN AREA (NW ITALY) 5
between the average temperatures in the city area and rural area: in the Turin case in 2014 it is +1.6 °C in spring and +0.6 °C in autumn. This feature is likely linked to the groundwater warming caused by the large urbanized area of Turin: the extensive cover of roads and buildings warms up the land surface and then this heat is transferred to the underlying aquifer.
Sporadic high temperatures (>16 °C) have local significance and may be related to point heat sources. In the case of La Loggia observation well (Fig. 2), located few kilometres south of the Turin city, groundwater reaches a temperature of around 17 °C. In this case the groundwater heating is likely linked to the presence of an industrial district that may be responsible of intense heat fluxes due to the huge volumes of warm indoor air and/or to industrial exothermic processes. Other outliers are: a well in Turin city close to an open-loop geothermal system working in heat injection mode, which displayed temperatures up to 23 °C -not in figure- and the Caselle T.se observation well (N of Turin), which showed a high maximum temperature in autumn (18.6 °C) and a marked difference with the spring value (13.4 °C). Without any further knowledge on heat sources in the surroundings and lithological variations at the site, such behaviour may be related to a significant seasonal effect on groundwater:
the small groundwater table depth (< 5 m) and the limited well depth (20 m) make the groundwater at that site largely influenced by the seasonal oscillations, even at the bottom of the observation well, where the plotted measurement was taken. Furthermore, the land use of both sites is constituted by large paved parking areas that might have amplified the heat accumulation during summer, with consequent high temperatures in autumn.
Fig. 3 and 4 show the typical urban thermal logs from the 2016 survey and their evolution in time. The 4 monitoring points (green dots in Fig. 2) were grouped in 3 sites: PZC1 and PZE6 (Site 1), are in the same site, a
former illegal landfill; PZ3 A is in Turin city neighbourhood with early urbanization (Site 2); PZ34 is located in an industrial waste landfill (Site 3). Site 1 and 3 have less dense urbanization. The strongest vertical variability is evident in the wells of Site 1 with shallow water table depth, whereas in Site 2 and 3 the groundwater temperatures are approximately constant in depth because the water table is below 20 m b.g.l., where the seasonal effects are supposed not to influence the groundwater temperatures.
The huge differences between PZC1 and PZE6 of Site 1 are mainly due to the position with respect to the landfill (PZC1 is downstream, PZE6 is upstream) and, secondarily, to the land use: PZC1 is drilled few centimetres far from an asphalted road, while PZE6 is some meters far from an unpaved road and around 10 m far from buildings.
Overall, groundwater in PZC1 is overheated by the heat transported from the polluted sector, where exothermic reactions of organic matter degradation likely occur (the site has methane burners), and by the asphalted road that, according to previous studies (i.e. Taylor & Stefan, 2009), can increment the temperatures up to 3 to 4 °C.
CONCLUSIONS
The climatic component has a major influence on the shallow aquifer temperatures in Turin area, creating vertical temperature heterogeneities up to 10 m depth.
Seasonal thermal variations are more effectively damped as long as the vadose zone is thicker. Other factors play an important role at regional level, such as recharge conditions and altitude of infiltration waters: the high plain sector has colder waters, compared to the low plain sectors. Anthropogenic heat sources were also recognized:
a diffuse temperature increase below the Turin city was indeed detected that ranges between 0.6 and 1.6 °C season- wise. At the same time, warmer outliers linked to local heat Fig.3 - Groundwater temperatures at 3 urban sites in spring of 2016.
Fig.4 - Groundwater temperatures at 3 urban sites in autumn of 2016.
A. BUCCI ET AL.
6
sources (polluted sites, industrial districts, geothermal systems) and/or site-specific conditions were also detected.
For instance, S to Turin a contaminated site constitutes an interesting case study of pollution-driven groundwater warming. Other outliers need further surveys for better comprehension of the measured temperature values.
Concerning the geothermal applications, the groundwater temperatures of shallow aquifer can be assumed as relatively constant throughout the year if compared with the wider seasonal air oscillation recorded in a medium temperate climate of continental Europe.
The thermal features of shallow aquifer, combined with the high productivity and the legal protection of deeper aquifers, contributes to create favourable conditions for the large-scale diffusion of groundwater-coupled heat pumps (GWHPs).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Most of the groundwater monitoring points were accessed thanks to the kind support of ARPA Piemonte. The authors are grateful to all the ARPA’s staff, as well as to all the private subjects and individuals who allowed to access the other monitoring wells.
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Water–budget as a tool to evaluate the sustainable use of groundwater resources (Isonzo Plain, NE Italy)
Chiara Calligaris (a), Giacomo Casagrande (b), Daniela Iervolino (c), Federica Lippi (c), Paolo Olivo (c), Massimo Ramani (c), Francesco Treu (a) & Luca Zini (a)
(a) Department of Mathematics and Geosciences, Trieste University, Via Weiss, 2, 34128, Trieste, Italy.
(b) Servizio gestione risorse idriche, Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia, Via Longarone 38 - Udine (Italy).
(c) Servizio gestione risorse idriche, Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia, Via Giulia 75/1 - 34126 Trieste (Italy).
Corresponding author e-mail: calligar@units.it Document type: Short note.
Manuscript submitted 30 June 2017; accepted 19 December 2017; editorial responsibility and handling by C. Meisina and S. Da Pelo
ABSTRACT
Climate change and the necessity to preserve and provide good quality freshwater for human consumption has led researchers to study the aquifers of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (NE Italy) in more detail. Of particular interest is the cross-border Soča/Isonzo River, which contributed to the creation of a remarkable alluvial aquifer. Today more than 300.000 inhabitants are supplied by water withdrawals from water wells which are located in the southern part of the aforementioned aquifer. Taking into consideration the importance of this area for the inhabitants, a groundwater balance was computed also to guarantee the sustainability of the actual use of the water resource.
The sustainability of the actual use of the resource comes from the consistency and ratio between recharge and withdrawals. The more detailed and precise the input values in the water balance are, the more conscious is the management and safeguarding of this precious resource, avoiding pauperisation in terms of quantity but especially quality.
KEY WORDS: water budget, hydrogeology, Soča/Isonzo River, climate change, Italy.
INTRODUCTION
Most of the liquid freshwater resources are stored as groundwater (99%) (Bäumle & Siemon, 2017). Their regional distribution on earth is dependent on climatic conditions as well as the geology of the subsurface.
Detailed knowledge of groundwater resources enables its sustainable use. In this framework, the awareness of the regional distribution of resources, the hydraulic characteristics of the aquifers as well as the regional and temporal variations of the water quantity results are fundamental in order to evaluate the amount of the resource.
As de Vries & Simmers (2002) report, in the mid-1980s, groundwater-recharge studies exploded in number. There were few studies dealing explicitly with groundwater recharge as a component of the water balance. But even if water is a circulating, naturally recharged resource, the climate system puts an upper limit on the circulation rate of available Renewable Fresh Water Resources (RFWR).
Although actual world global withdrawals are below the upper limit, many people live in highly water-stressed areas because of the uneven distribution of RFWR in time and space (Corbatto et al., 2016). As reported by Oki &
Kanae (2006), climate change is expected to accelerate water cycles. This means that there will be a change in seasonal patterns and a continuous increase in extreme events as testified also by the data collected and analysed by Calligaris et al. (2016) for the study area.
Whether the concept expressed by Oki & Kanae (2006) is right or wrong, a detailed study of the territories in which we live represents a preliminary insight leading to a broader knowledge, understood as a first step to the conscious use of the groundwater resource.
The Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (NE Italy) is a small territory (7.845 km²) where surface fresh waters, springs and groundwaters are abundant (fig.1) and the area is reported as the rainiest in Italy. The waters are an important natural wealth in terms of quantity, quality and ease of supply. This optimal condition, however, is thought to allow for irrational and poorly controlled exploitation.
This inevitably produced tangible consequences on the water resources availability. In the last twenty years, a lowering in the phreatic groundwater levels of the High Plain and a lowering of pressure in the confined aquifers of the Low Plain has been noted (Cucchi et al., 1999;
Martelli & Granati, 2010; Bezzi et al., 2016; Calligaris et al., 2016). These phenomena are accompanied by the gradual amplitude range reduction of the spring belt (Vella, 2013), resulting in a decrease of the amount of available water to the naturalness of the lowlands, in an impact on ecosystems and related loss of traditional habitats such as wet meadows.
Unless appropriate measures are taken at a regional level, the intense human pressure will probably cause the persistence or the increase of the previously described phenomena.
The recharge, the natural runoff and groundwater exploitation rates have also to be known in light of a sustainable groundwater management.
Rend. Online Soc. Geol. It., Vol. 47 (2019), pp. 7-12, 2 figs., 1 tab. (https://doi.org/10.3301/ROL.2019.02)
© Società Geologica Italiana, Roma 2019
Author’s personal copy
C. CALLIGARIS ET AL.
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GEOLOGICAL AND HYDROGEOLOGICAL SETTING The Soča/Isonzo Plain is located in the north-eastern corner of Italy, on the eastern side of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region bordering Slovenia (Fig. 1).
The karst spring of the Soča/Isonzo River originates under the glaciated Julian Alps in Slovenia. The river crosses the Italian border after a path of about 100 km, flowing into the Adriatic Sea. It is the second largest river of the region. Its average annual discharge, measured at the entrance in Italy (Solkan gauging station, SLO) was estimated to be 90 m3/s (Bat et al., 2008; Siché &
Arnaud-Fassetta, 2014), the average discharge at the river mouth is estimated to be about 170 m3/s.
The plain area, subject of the present study, is the result of a significant sediment transport which occurred during the Quaternary. It is enough to consider the period after the Wȕrmian glacial age when from the frontal side of the alpine glacier, the glacial outlets flowed, modifying the environment and building up the actual morphology (Venturini, 2003). The Soča/Isonzo River modified its flow path. During the Roman age it flowed bordering the
Karst hydrostructure near the small town of Ronchi dei Legionari. During the Middle Ages, that river branch was abandoned and the river moved to its current location (Venturini, 2003).
Quaternary deposits forming the plain are characterised by a variable thickness: from 100 m in a depression sited S of Gorizia, up to 350 m in the Villesse area (Treu et al., 2017). The thickness gradually decreases towards the NE at the border with Slovenia where it is between 20 - 30 m (Zini et al., 2011).
These deposits are characterised by the presence of an extensive alluvial unconfined aquifer, which evolves southward into a multi-layered confined/semiconfined aquifer. The aquifers greatly differ from a textural viewpoint:
the northern part of the plain, the so-called High Plain (fig.1, in yellow), is more gravelly, while the Low Plain (Fig. 1, in red) in the southern part, mainly consists of finer deposits sizing from gravel to sand and silty-sand. From the ground level to the pre-Quaternary bedrock, six aquifer systems are recognised and referred to using a letter of the alphabet.
Aquifer A, generally positioned between 10 m and 40 m b.s.l., is widely present in the Low Plain and is characterised Fig.1. - Study area location and geological map (C). A) Overview of the Italian peninsula and the location of the study area in the red rectangle;
B) In pale blue the Soča/Isonzo cross-border watershed. In bright colours, the Groundwater bodies used to compute the water budget. The High Plain in yellow and the Low Plain in red.
WATER–BUDGET AS A TOOL TO EVALUATE THE SUSTAINABLE USE OF GROUNDWATER RESOURCES (ISONZO PLAIN, NE ITALY) 9
by permeable layers from sandy to sandy-gravelly deposits.
Their total thickness is around 30 m.
Aquifer B is a permeable gravelly and sandy layer, fairly constant with the top at about 70/80 m b.s.l. with an average thickness of 15 m.
Aquifer C can be identified at depths of around 110 m b.s.l. and consists of mainly sandy permeable layers with an average thickness of 15 m.
Aquifer D is made up of a set of thin layers (sandy- gravelly deposits). The top of this system stands at about 140 b.s.l., with an average thickness of about 10 m.
Aquifer E is an interval consisting of clean and coarse gravel in the northern part shifting into gravel with sand and silt to the south with a thickness of only few meters.
It is not always continuous with a top identifiable at approximately 180 m b.s.l.
Aquifer F is made up of a set of different permeable complex levels of gravelly-sand deposits. The top of this system is present at 190 m b.s.l. The average thickness is about 15 m.
In the Low Plain a shallow and not continuous phreatic aquifer is also present.
Slovene waters flowing in the Soča/Isonzo mountain basin recharge the river. Prior to its course reaching the Italian border its flow is intercepted by the Solkan dam.
Once in Italy, the Soča/Isonzo waters contribute to the aquifer recharge which, in turn, also partially contribute to the recharge of the Classical Karst hydrostructure with about 10 m3/s (Zini et al., 2013a).
METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH
WELL WITHDRAWALS
To obtain the budget in non-natural conditions, the groundwater withdrawals were evaluated for each type of use and for each aquifer system. Data were analysed starting from 2 Geodatabase: one for the domestic use, not subject to withdrawal license referred to as “domestic withdrawals” (1077 wells and 4244 estimated users in the High Plain, and 2068 wells and 7345 estimated users in the confined aquifers of the Low Plain) and one concerning industrial, agricultural, fish breeding, hygienic, geothermal and other minor uses, referred to as “licensed withdrawals”, instead subjected to a required license for withdrawing. The domestic withdrawals were estimated based on the number of declared wells and the number of people supplied (ISTAT, 2001), while the “licenced well” withdrawals were estimated based on the real water consumption recorded via counter meters.
The well withdrawal amounts were evaluated on an annual basis and are expressed as m3/s. The withdrawal quantity is calculated for the year 2016 (which is considered to be a mean year).
In the High Plain, considering the use of 290 l/d for a single person, there is a withdrawal of 0.01 m3/s for domestic use from the phreatic aquifer. The total licensed withdrawal amount was calculated to be 0.70 m3/s with a prevalence for the use of drinking water (42%) industrial uses (34%) and the agricultural requirements (8%) (tab. 1).
In the Low Plain, downstream from the spring belt, most part of the withdrawals are related to a shallow aquifer system (A+B) with a withdrawal volume of about 2.60 m3/s
(1.11 m3/s licensed and 1.49 m3/s domestic) mainly due to domestic (57%) and drinking (29%) uses over the others.
In the Aquifer C system, the domestic withdrawals are few, only 0.02 m3/s, 6% of the total amount in that aquifer system compared to that for drinking water (which reaches 0.49 m3/s, the 94%). Increasing the depth, the situation is similar, from D to F. In these deep aquifers, 81% of the waters are used for drinking, and the rest is used for other purposes. These numbers are linked to the good quality waters present in these aquifers and to the withdrawals due to the water supply systems for drinking purposes.
Analysing the quantities, from the phreatic aquifer of the High Plain there is a total withdrawn volume of water of 0.71 m3/s. The amount of water withdrawn from the system of aquifers in the Low Plain is instead of 3.95 m3/s (tab 1).
WATER HYDROGEOLOGICAL BUDGET
The considerable water withdrawals and the rapid deterioration of the groundwaters have highlighted the necessity for an assessment of its sustainable consumption and future use. In order to complete this assessment, hydrogeological balance can be considered a useful tool in the evaluation of the available resources.
The orography of the study area is extremely favourable for the computation of the water budget, being a bounded basin with limited water sharing. To compute the budget, we used the groundwater bodies defined in the plain areas according to the hydrogeological provinces (Cucchi et al., 2008) based on the hydrogeological and geochemical characteristics of the groundwaters (Fig. 1B, the High Plain in yellow and the Low Plain in red).
The budget was computed solving the equation P=ET+R+I on a 500 m regular grid.
The terms of the equation are respectively:
P, which represents the precipitation;
ET, which is the crop evapotranspiration;
R, being the run-off;
I, which is the effective infiltration.
TABLE 1
Withdrawals in [m3/s] calculated for the phreatic and confined aquifers of the High and Low Plain.
Licensed withdrawals
[m3/s]
Domestic withdrawals
[m3/s] TOTAL High Plain
Phreatic aquifer 0,70 0,01 0,71
Low Plain
Phreatic aquifer 0,16 0,00 0,16
Low Plain
confined A+B 1,11 1,49
Low Plain 3,95
confined C 0,49 0,02
Low Plain
deep aquifers 0,72 0,12
C. CALLIGARIS ET AL.
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To compute the budget, well withdrawals in the phreatic and confined aquifers must be subtracted.
In the budget computation, the precipitation amount (P) was summarised using the daily rainfall data; the process of snow accumulation and snow melting was taken into account.
The evapotranspiration (ET) was quantified as
“crop evapotranspiration” and calculated using the two step approach as a product between reference evapotranspiration, calculated using a modified Hargreaves-Samani formula (Hargreaves, 1994; Allen et al., 1998; Carobin, 2008) and crop coefficient (Kc). The formula was chosen according to the results obtained by Carobin (2008) which modified the Hergaves-Samani formula to obtain results similar to that of the Penman- Montheith FAO-56 formula. The Hergaves-Samani was site-specific calibrated to reduce overestimation.
The run - off component (R) was calculated using the curve number methodology modified by Kannan et al.
(2008) for continuous analysis.
The effective infiltration was calculated subtracting from P, R and ET seeing that the data regarding the soil characteristics were not always available and homogeneously distributed over the territory. We assumed I=0 in case of negative values.
RESULTS
For the Judrio and Versa rivers, the mountain basin discharge was calculated to be 7.6 m3/s taking into consideration the run-off and the effective infiltration.
During the wet months, 90% of the discharge infiltrates, while during the dry season all the waters infiltrate and the riverbed is dry. For this reason, the infiltration was calculated on a monthly basis and then summed obtaining a value of 7.4 m3/s.
For the Soča/Isonzo River basin, run-off (R) and infiltration (I) not being available, we used the total river discharge. For the reconstruction of the discharges and leakages we used data coming from several hydrological and hydrogeological surveys carried out in the framework of the ITA-SLO 2007-2013 Camis Project (A.A.V.V., 2015).
The main difficulties in measuring the discharge were due to the hydropicking at the Solkan dam (SLO), which seldom allows for discharge measurement in stationary conditions.
The subsequent elaboration of the H/Q rating curve had to take into account the changing discharge effect (with the same hydrometric stage, the river can show different discharges) and the derivations for agricultural purposes.
These effects were overcome thanks to the huge amount of measurements made and a multi-section approach (4 discharge sections along 14 km of river flow):
– different single measurements (not contemporary through different sections) were done in different hydrologic conditions (about 40 measures per section);
– continuous discharge measurements (1 discharge measure every 30 minutes for a 4-5 hour hydropeaking cycle) during hydropeaking were carried for entire loading/unloading cycles and for different cycles.
According to the river base flow, the cycle generally starts at discharges of 30-40 m3/s (base flow) up to 120- 140 m3/s (peak discharge);
– during the stationary phases, contemporary discharge measurements (1 measure per section every hour, for 5-6 hours) were carried out in correspondence of cross- sections spaced 5 to 10 km apart.
The result was the evaluation of a mean daily discharge river for the 2014-2016 period. The mean annual discharge was found to be 141 m3/s for the 2014, 55 m3/s during 2015 and 101 m3/s in 2016. The differences in the resulted river discharges are in agreement with the differences in the precipitation regime recorded in the mountain basin during the study period.
The reliability of the discharge measures corresponds to the 5% of the measured discharge (referred to a single measure which is the mean of 4 values), which is due to the limit of the instrument and to the measurement and validation approach.
The river leakages were also defined thanks to:
– contemporary flow rate measurements in different but close river sections (2-3 km away one from each other);
– the drilling of 6 piezometers in 2 different backswamps of the flood plain where the water level, temperature and electrical conductivity were measured continuously.
The natural variations of these parameters, jointly with the grain size analyses and the geophysical investigations, allowed for the estimation of the quantities of the Soča/
Isonzo leakages as 0.2 m3/s/km during low flow conditions up to 1.6 m3/s/km during high flow conditions (Casagrande
& Avon, 2016).
The approach with discharge measurements on close sections and the computation of the average monthly discharge rate at the sections, confirmed the magnitude of the leakages which corresponds to the estimation of 15%
of the annual discharge measured at Gorizia.
For the Vipacco River, as for the Soča/Isonzo, the available discharges measured at Miren, close to the ITA- SLO border, were used in order to estimate the value of the leakages which were considered to be 10% of the measured discharge.
For the Torre River, discharge values were available in the regional archives (Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, 2012) and an infiltration value was calculated to be 1.3 m3/s.
For the High Plain area, the effective infiltration (I) was 3.6 m3/s, to which the contribution of the irrigation return flow (0.5 m3/s) was added.
In order to compute the groundwater balance from all the input which contributes to the High Plain it is necessary to subtract the waters which contribute to the recharge of the karst hydrostructure valued at 10.0 m3/s.
The number corresponds to the discharge measured at the Timavo springs area in low flow conditions (after a very dry period) when it has been demonstrated (Doctor, 2008;
Zini et al., 2013b) that the drained waters are mainly due to the leakage from the Soča/Isonzo River which, in turn, recharges the western part of the Classical Karst.
In the High Plain area, it is necessary to subtract the component due to the discharge in correspondence with the spring belt, estimated at around 16.0 m3/s (Zini et al., 2011).
Only a modest amount of water remains (3.4 m3/s) to recharge the systems of aquifers of the Low Plain once all the withdrawals have been subtracted. To this volume, we
WATER–BUDGET AS A TOOL TO EVALUATE THE SUSTAINABLE USE OF GROUNDWATER RESOURCES (ISONZO PLAIN, NE ITALY) 11
added the contribution to the recharge coming from the karst aquifer (estimated at about 1.0 m3/s), proven by the presence of springs bordering the karst hydrostructure in contact with the alluvial plain (in the Ronchi dei Legionari area). When these numbers are applied the balance is positive, with a value of 0.5 m3/s (Fig. 2).
CONCLUSIONS
The proof of the sustainable use of the resource derives from the congruity between recharge and withdrawals, whereas discharge measured in correspondence with the spring belt is an indirect indicator of the balance of the system. Its decrease could dramatically compromise these delicate wet ecosystems with an irreparable loss of the present environment.
At the current state of knowledge of the study site, it is possible to assert that the groundwater budget indicates that the balance is fragile. The calculated values are the expression of detailed work carried out over years in order to reduce uncertainties (Zini et al., 2011; Cucchi et al., 2015). The discharge values measured have an accuracy of +/-5%, due to the methodological approach, the validation of the measures and the limits of the instruments used. The uncertainty of the input received from the karst is mainly
due to two factors: the discharge estimation (Gemiti, 1984;
Casagrande, 2015) and the current lack of knowledge regarding the submerged springs discharge which has been well estimated (Gemiti, 1984; Gemiti 1995) but never measured. These considerations adduce to a+/-5-10% of uncertainty to add to the final water balance which means that in a world where climate change is a reality with periods of very dry seasons which alternate with extremely wet periods, the priority is to continue to measure all the factors which contribute to the balance in order to guarantee the sustainable use of the water resource for present and future generations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Prof. Franco Cucchi (DMG - University of Trieste) for his valuable advice and dott. Andrea Cicogna (ARPA FVG - Osservatorio Meteorologico Regionale) for kindly providing the meteoclimatic data for the period 2014-2016 and for his invaluable collaboration. At last we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Karolyn Close who revised the text.
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Fig. 2. - Groundwater budget computed in the Soča/Isonzo Plain. HP is the High Plain, LP is the Low Plain. All the numbers have been rounded to a single digit after the decimal.
