Search

Water scarcity will increase in the world in the coming decades due to climate change, especially in areas that currently already have water scarcity, such as the Mediterranean area. In these areas, to guarantee water resources, systems' sustainability is necessary to improve demand management and the development of non-conventional resources, such as treated wastewater reuse or seawater desalination. These non-conventional resources are highly energy-consuming; so, reducing energy costs is a key element in developing their use in different sectors, including agriculture. Combining photovoltaic solar energy with seawater desalination by reverse osmosis will reduce the cost of producing water to below 0.36 EUR/m3; so, this resource can be attractive for agriculture, as demonstrated in this work. The arrangement of bifacial solar modules in horizontal single-axis tracking systems increases the energy amount generated from the sun in one hour or more, improving the facility's efficiency and reducing the desalinated water cost. The greater distance between the solar module lines, with a ground coverage ratio (GCR) = 0.3, makes for a better environmental integration of the facility and allows the development of agrovoltaic strategies, such as native flora planting and pollinator colonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an interpolation model for monthly rainfall in large areas of complex orography. It has been implemented in the Iberian Peninsula (continental territories of Spain and Portugal), Balearic and Canary Islands covering a territory of almost 600.000 km2. To do this a data set that comprises a total number of 11,822 monthly precipitation series has been created (11,042 provided by the Spanish Meteorological Agency and 780 provided by the National Water Resources Information System of the Portuguese Water Institute). The data set covers the period from October 1940 until September 2005. The interpolation model has been based on the assumption of two different components on monthly precipitation. The first component reflects local and seasonal characteristics and 24 different mean monthly precipitation maps (12) and SDs maps (12) compose it. It considers the varying influence of physiographic variables such as altitude and orientation. The second precipitation component reflects the synoptic pattern that dominated each month of the series and it is composed by series of anomalies of monthly precipitation (780). Anomalies have been interpolated by means of ordinary kriging once local spatial continuity was assumed. Gridded maps of each variable have been developed at 200 m resolution following a hybrid methodology that implements two different interpolation techniques. The first technique applies a regression analysis to derive maps depending on altitude and orientation; the second one is a weighting technique to consider the non‐linearity of the precipitation/altitude dependence. Cross validation has been applied to estimate the goodness of both techniques. Results show an average annual precipitation of 655 mm/year. Although this figure is only 4% less than the estimate of MAGRAMA (2004), regional and local differences are highlighted when the spatial distribution is considered. The model constitutes a comprehensive implementation considering the availability of historical records and the need of avoiding slow calculations in large territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents how to solve some practical problems of water planning in a medium/large river basin, such as: the water resources assessment and its spatial-temporal variability over the long-short term, the impact of human activities on the water cycle, due to groundwater pumping and water returns into aquifers, the river-aquifer interactions and the aquifer depletion. It is based on the use of a new monthly conceptual distributed water balance model -PATRICAL- that includes the surface water (SW), groundwater (GW) behavior and the river-aquifer interaction. The model is applied to the Júcar River Basin District (RBD) in Spain (43,000 km), with more than 250 aquifers, including catchments with humid climates (Júcar RBD northern), semiarid and arid catchments (southern). The model has a small number of parameters and obtains a satisfactory performance in SW and GW behavior. It has been calibrated/validated using monthly streamflows and two additional elements not generally used in models for large river basins, GW levels and river-aquifer interactions. In the hydrological time series of the Júcar RBD headers a statistical change point in the year 1979/80 is detected. It is due to changes in precipitation patterns and represents a 40 % of reduction in streamflows in relation with the previous period. The impact of GW pumping in all aquifers is determined, the 'Mancha Oriental' aquifer produces a significant reduction in streamflows of the Júcar river -around 200-250 hm/year. The GW level in the 'Villena-Benejama' aquifer -Vinalopo Valley- has declined more than 200 m in last 30 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water is a strategic resource for the economic, social and environmental development. However, water scarcity and droughts are current challenges to this growth, as it is reflected in European Union (EU) water policies, and in national and regional growing initiatives. In addition, these water related issues could worsen by climate change effects, adding pressure to already water stressed areas. This paper presents a general overview of drought management in the European Union, reviews scientific and technical advances, the status of implementation of policy tools and focuses on drought management plans. It analyses the specific case of Spain, a country characterised by presenting a high irregularity in temporal and spatial distribution of water resources and numerous areas affected by water scarcity and droughts. Details are presented on the National Drought Indicator System and drought management plans approved in 2007 in Spain, which represent strategic tools with positive results in drought warning and impact mitigation respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biomonitoring methods implemented by water authorities are mostly developed for perennial rivers, and do not apply to temporary rivers (TRs). We propose a new classification for TRs to better assess their ecological status. It arises from the LIFE+ TRivers project, which was conducted in the Catalan and the Júcar Mediterranean river basin districts (RBD). The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) provided two systems to set river types (systems A or B from Annex II), which have been officially used by water authorities across Europe to set "national river types" (NRTs). However, essential hydrological variables for TRs are largely omitted. NRTs established according to the WFD were compared with TR categories obtained by using a rainfall-runoff model, "natural flows prescribed regimes" (NFPRs), and with "aquatic phases regimes" (APRs) calculated by using TREHS software. The biological quality indices currently used in Spain, based on macroinvertebrates and diatoms (IBMWP, IMMI-T, and IPS), were compared with a "general degradation" gradient in order to analyze the two TR river classification procedures (NFPR and APR). The results showed that NRTs did not properly classify TRs, and that the APR classification identified ecologically meaningful categories, especially those related to stagnant phases. Four "management temporary river categories" based on APRs are proposed to be used for water managers to properly assess the ecological status of TRs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Droughts are one of the gravest natural threats currently existing in the world and their occurrence and intensity might be exacerbated in the coming years due to climate change. The severe impacts that droughts cause to inland water resources and to the associated socio-economic activities justify the continuous monitoring of the drought. The case study presented shows a practical application of a distributed drought monitoring system implemented in a real river basin district, the Júcar River Basin District (43,000 km 2 ), where drought periods of marked intensity have occurred historically and the climate ranges from humid in the north to semiarid in the south. Five drought indices have been applied: Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) for meteorological drought; Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and a new soil moisture index (HI), for edaphic drought; Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for the vegetation activity; and Spanish Status Index (SI), for the operational drought. All indices are standardised to compare them. The relationship between the standardised operational drought index SI and the long-term meteorological indices, SPI-12 or SPI-24, show that in a medium size basin the concept of “prolonged drought” required by the European Commission under the Water Framework Directive could be defined by the use of accumulated precipitation indices. The number of months to be accumulated depends on the size of the basin and the water management system properties. In large basins, such as the Júcar river basin (22,000 km 2 ), there are significant deviations due to the spatial distribution of the drought. The use of a unique aggregated indicator could hide a significant drought in a specific area, or on the other hand show a non-real drought. Evolution of drought indices for each water management system must be accompanied by spatially distributed drought maps to better understand the drought status and its evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intensive groundwater development is a common circumstance in semiarid and arid areas. Often abstraction exceeds recharge, thus continuously depleting reserves. There is groundwater mining when the recovery of aquifer reserves needs more than 50 years. The MASE project has been carried out to compile what is known about Spain and specifically about the south-eastern Iberian Peninsula and the Canary Islands. The objective was the synthetic analysis of available data on the hydrological, economic, managerial, social, and ethical aspects of groundwater mining. Since the mid-20th century, intensive use of groundwater in south-eastern Spain allowed extending and securing the areas with traditional surface water irrigation of cash crops and their extension to former dry lands, taking advantage of good soils and climate. This fostered a huge economic and social development. Intensive agriculture is a main activity, although tourism plays currently an increasing economic role in the coasts. Many aquifers are relatively high yielding small carbonate units where the total groundwater level drawdown may currently exceed 300 m. Groundwater storage depletion is estimated about 15 km 3 . This volume is close to the total contribution of the Tagus-Segura water transfer, but without large investments paid for with public funds. Seawater desalination complements urban supply and part of cash crop cultivation. Reclaimed urban waste water is used for irrigation. Groundwater mining produces benefits but associated to sometimes serious economic, administrative, legal and environmental problems. The use of an exhaustible vital resource raises ethical concerns. It cannot continue under the current legal conditions. A progressive change of water use paradigm is the way out, but this is not in the mind of most water managers and politicians. The positive and negative results observed in south-eastern Spain may help to analyse other areas under similar hydrogeological conditions in a less advanced stage of water use evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper describes two different GIS models – one stationary (GeoImpress) and the other non-stationary (Patrical) – that assess water quantity and quality in the Júcar River Basin District, a large river basin district (43,000km2) located in Spain. It aims to analyze the status of surface water (SW) and groundwater (GW) bodies in relation to the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) and to support measures to achieve the WFD objectives. The non-stationary model is used for quantitative analysis of water resources, including long-term water resource assessment; estimation of available GW resources; and evaluation of climate change impact on water resources. The main results obtained are the following: recent water resources have been reduced by approximately 18% compared to the reference period 1961–1990; the GW environmental volume required to accomplish the WFD objectives is approximately 30% of the GW annual resources; and the climate change impact on water resources for the short-term (2010–2040), based on a dynamic downscaling A1B scenario, implies a reduction in water resources by approximately 19% compared to 1990–2000 and a reduction of approximately 40–50% for the long-term (2070–2100), based on dynamic downscaling A2 and B2 scenarios. The model also assesses the impact of various fertilizer application scenarios on the status of future GW quality (nitrate) and if these future statuses will meet the WFD requirements. The stationary model generates data on the actual and future chemical status of SW bodies in the river basin according to the modeled scenarios and reflects the implementation of different types of measures to accomplish the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive and the WFD. Finally, the selection and prioritization of additional measures to accomplish the WFD are based on cost-effectiveness analysis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC implemented by the European Union established as the main objectives to achieve a "good ecological and chemical status" of the surface water and a "good quantitative and chemical status" of groundwater bodies. One of the major pressures affecting water bodies comes from the use of pesticides and their potential presence in the water ecosystems. For this purpose, the reliable determination of pesticides and their transformation products (TPs) in natural waters (both surface and groundwater) is required. The high number of compounds potentially reaching the aquatic environment makes extraordinary difficult, if not impossible, to investigate all these compounds even using the most powerful analytical techniques. Among these, liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry is emphasized due to its strong potential for detection and identification of many organic contaminants thanks to the accurate-mass full spectrum acquisition data. This work focuses on wide-scope screening of many pesticides and their TPs in surface water and groundwater samples, collected between March and May 2017, in the Júcar River Hydrographical Basin, Spain. For this purpose, a home-made database containing more than 500 pesticides and TPs was employed. Analyses performed by liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry (LC-QTOF MS) allowed the identification of up to 27 pesticides and 6 TPs. The most detected compounds in groundwater were the herbicides atrazine, simazine, terbuthylazine, and their TPs (atrazine-desethyl, terbumeton-desethyl and terbuthylazine-desethyl). Regarding surface water, the fungicides carbendazim, thiabendazole and imazalil, the herbicide terbutryn and the TP terbumeton-desethyl were also detected. These results illustrate the wide use of these compounds (in the present or in the recent past) in the area under study and the vulnerability of the water bodies, and are in accordance with previous findings in other water bodies of the different Spanish Hydrographic systems. Image 1 • High resolution mass spectrometry wide-scope screening of pesticides in water. • 27 pesticides and 6 transformation products were found in water samples. • Some compounds not included in routine target quantitative methods were identified. • Screening methodology was validated for 20 compounds commonly found in water. • Triazines and transformation products were the most frequently identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major difficulties in water planning is to determine the water availability in a water resource system in order to distribute water sustainably. In this paper, we analyze the key issues for determining the exploitable water resources as an indicator of water availability in a Mediterranean river basin. Historically, these territories are characterized by heavily regulated water resources and the extensive use of unconventional resources (desalination and wastewater reuse); hence, emulating the hydrological cycle is not enough. This analysis considers the Jucar River Basin as a case study. We have analyzed the different possible combinations between the streamflow time series, the length of the simulation period and the reliability criteria. As expected, the results show a wide dispersion, proving the great influence of the reliability criteria used for the quantification and localization of the exploitable water resources in the system. Therefore, it is considered risky to provide a single value to represent the water availability in the Jucar water resource system. In this sense, it is necessary that policymakers and stakeholders make a decision about the methodology used to determine the exploitable water resources in a river basin., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)