Abstract:
Understanding the impact of climate change on groundwater recharge is crucial for the sustainable management of aquifers. Numerical models assist in the licensing decisions of regulatory agencies, but they rely on estimates of recharge fluxes that can be highly uncertain.
Furthermore, management strategies in response to climate change face challenges such as the lack of empirical data to validate predicted changes or backing up processes not entirely understood.
By applying multiple estimation methods, using the data collected at seven locations in Western Australia, we emphasize the importance of deploying monitoring stations based on different sensor typologies. We delve into the biophysical processes that dictate the mechanism of groundwater recharge and highlight how the dynamics and characteristics of wetting fronts are influenced by the climatic variables and the vegetation response.
The insights obtained from this type of station can be utilised to understand the effect of diverse land uses, soil types, and climatic drivers on recharge and evapotranspiration fluxes.
Estimates can then be benchmarked against broader observations, such as data provided by remote sensing or borewell measurements, while quantifying different sources of uncertainty (e.g. methodological or epistemic), generating robust databases useful for water resources models.