A new method is presented which allows interpreting pumping test in heterogeneous transmissivity fields. Based on radially dependent transmissivity, the effective well flow solution is derived for two cases: the ensemble mean of pumping tests and the drawdown at an individual heterogeneous transmissivity field. The analytical form of the solution allows inversely estimating the parameters of aquifer heterogeneity (mean, variance, and correlation length) from steady-state pumping test data.

Calculation of hydraulic conductivity of porous materials is crucial for further use in hydrogeological modeling. The Kozeny–Carman model is theoretically impeccable but has not been properly used in recent scientific and expert literature. In this paper, proper use of the Kozeny-Carman formula is given through presentation of geometric mean grain size in the drilled-core sample as the referential mean grain size. Also, procedures for identification of real effective porosity of porous media are presented.

This paper employs a one-dimensional hydrodynamic ice model to simulate ice cover and thermal structure of dimictic Lake Mendota, WI, USA, over a continuous 104-year period (1911–2014) with the purpose of better understanding how the changing climate will affect lakes. It is shown that air temperature and wind speed changes have occurred in stages and ice cover and lake thermal structure have responded in a nonlinear way to these changes.

A 1013-year annual rainfall reconstruction was developed for the Williams River catchment in coastal eastern Australia, based on a linear relationship between sea salt deposition in East Antarctica and rainfall in eastern Australia. The reconstruction allows for the instrumental climate record (~ 100 years) to be assessed in the context of millennial climate variability, allowing for better characterisation of flood and drought risk.

This paper provides empirical evidence for the value of using a psychology-based approach to communication of hydrology and hazards. It demonstrates the use of the "mental models" approach to risk assessment used in a regional geoscience context to explore the conceptions of the geological subsurface between experts and non-experts, and how that impacts on communication.

Educational activities are now a common channel to increase impact of research projects. Here, we present innovative activities for young children that aim to help them (and their teachers) grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues in environmental fields. The activities developed are focused on rainfall: observation and modeling of rain drop size and the succession of dry and rainy days, and writing of a scientific book. All activities were implemented in classrooms.

Regional climate model (RegCM4) simulations demonstrate that part of the observed decrease in moderate rainfall events during the summer monsoon season over central India from 1951 to 2005 is attributed to anthropogenically induced land-use land-cover change (LULCC). LULCC also partly explains the observed warming trend in the daily mean and maximum temperatures over India. This study demonstrates the importance of LULCC in the context of regional climate change over India.

A set of the new Euro-CORDEX projections is used to examine the impact of high-end scenarios on water availability and stress at a pan-European scale. Drought climatology is investigated for five major European basins along with the impact of +2 °C versus +4 °C warming. The effect of bias correction is also examined. The selection of the observational data set used for bias adjustment has an impact on the projected signal that could be of the same order of magnitude as the selection of the RCM.

Issuing a good hydrological forecast is challenging because of the numerous sources of uncertainty that lay in the description of the hydrometeorological processes. Several modeling techniques are investigated in this paper to assess how they contribute to the forecast quality. It is shown that the best modeling approach uses several dissimilar techniques that each tackle one source of uncertainty.

This paper presents a novel approach that provides evidence of environmental conditions during the formation of a cave inferred from measuring the geometry of the cave surface. We focused on winding channels with associated cave landforms carved high up in the cave ceiling inaccessible to direct inspection by speleologists. This was possible by coupling 3-D laser scanning of the cave and analyzing the cave morphology by the tools used in 3-D computer graphics and digital terrain analysis.

High-frequency water quality measurements at a pumping station where excess water is pumped out of a polder catchment have indicated that nitrate from agricultural areas is drained away relatively quickly in wet periods, but that phosphate is actually retained much more in polder systems than in free drainage areas. Phosphate emissions occur, therefore, not predominantly in winter, but due to the delayed release from the bed sediments and by feeding from the groundwater, rather in summer.

Changing climate and growing populations pose significant challenges for managing water resources. However, a better understanding of these would contribute to improved decisions about how adequate water supplies are maintained. In this paper, we show that a portfolio of both demand management and new supply options are required for the Thames Basin, which provides the majority of water for London, to help alleviate climate and population challenges in the future.

A new innovative method of aquifer characterization is presented, using tomographic thermal tracer tests to map the hydraulic conductivity distribution. The travel times of the heated water between different sources and receivers are used in the inversion process following an analog procedure with hydraulic tomography. The developed method is a fast and robust alternative of model calibration. The method is tested on a virtual aquifer and shows applicability under a broad range of conditions.

Yields of rainfed winter crops such as wheat can be substantially improved with limited supplemental irrigation. The upper Karkheh River basin in Iran has 15 840 km² of rainfed crops. A GIS method was designed to identify suitable areas for irrigation and a routine was developed to allocate water uses and route the flows downstream. A maximum of 13 % of the rainfed cropland could be irrigated under normal flow, 9 % if environmental flow requirements are considered and 6 % under drought conditions.

Semi-structured interviews provide an effective and efficient way of collecting qualitative and quantitative data on water use practices. Interviews are organised around a topic guide, which helps lead the conversation while allowing sufficient opportunity to identify issues previously unknown to the researcher. The use of semi-structured interviews could significantly and quickly improve insight on water resources, leading to more realistic future management options and increased water security.

Our primary objective in this study is to provide a virtual environment that allows users to determine the value of geophysical data and, furthermore, to investigate how best to use those data to develop groundwater models and to reduce their prediction errors. When this has been carried through for alternative data sampling, parameterization and inversion approaches, the best alternative can be chosen by comparison of prediction results between the alternatives.

Possible future climate change effects on dryness conditions in Poland are estimated for six climate projections using the standardized precipitation index. The time series of precipitation represent six different climate model runs under the A1B SRES scenario for the period 1971–2099. Monthly precipitation values were used to estimate the standardized precipitation index for multiple timescales (1, 3, 6, 12 and 24 months) for a spatial resolution of 25 km for the whole country.

This study presents crop-specific seasonal estimates of irrigation-water demand in South Asia resulting from the typical practice of multiple cropping. We show that crop irrigation-water demand differs sharply between seasons and regions; in Pakistan, winter and summer irrigation demands are almost equal, whereas in Bangladesh the demand in winter is much higher. Insight in where and when sufficient irrigation water supply is critical to sustain food production, is essential to plan adaptation.

We report new data for carbon and sulfur isotopes of the groundwater flow system in a coastal carbonate aquifer of northeast China. It shows how these can be used to determine the major processes controlling sulfate cycling and transport. Hopefully the study will be of broad international interest, and is expected to improve the understanding of techniques to determine impacts on groundwater quality and flow, leading to improved groundwater protection and monitoring strategies.

Hydraulic redistribution (HR) of plant root has important hydrological impact (on evapotranspiration, Bowen ratio, and soil moisture) in ecosystems that have a pronounced dry season but are not overall so dry that sparse vegetation and very low soil moisture limit HR.

A primary advantage of using model ensembles for climate change impact studies is to represent the uncertainties associated with models through the ensemble spread. Currently, most of the conventional bias correction methods adjust all the ensemble members to one reference observation. As a result, the ensemble spread is degraded during bias correction. However the proposed method is able to correct the bias and conform to the ensemble spread so that the ensemble information can be better used.

This study puts the hydraulic heterogeneity of coarse, braided river deposits in concrete terms, combining geophysics and sedimentological observations; shows the possible impact of the heterogeneity on the three-dimensional flow field in terms of subsurface flow mixing; and demonstrates that not only the fast subsurface flow paths are important but also the hydraulic head field.

We present HYPERstream, an innovative, parsimonious, and computationally efficient streamflow routing scheme based on the width function instantaneous unit hydrograph theory. HYPERstream is designed to be easily coupled with climate models and to preserve the geomorphological dispersion of the river network, irrespective of the model grid size. This makes HYPERstream well suited for multi-scale applications (from catchment up to continental scale) and to investigate extreme events (e.g. floods).

We estimated forest transpiration (European beech) along a steep valley cross section. Atmospheric demand, obtained by the thermodynamic limit of maximum power, is the dominant control of transpiration at all sites. To our surprise we find that transpiration is rather similar across sites with different aspect (north vs. south) and different stand structure due to systematically varying sap velocities. Such a compensation effect is highly relevant for modeling and upscaling of transpiration.

Streamflow estimation during low-flow conditions is important for estimation of environmental flows, effluent water quality, hydropower operations, etc. However, it is not clear how the uncertainties in assumptions used in the projections translate into uncertainty of estimated future low flows. The objective of the study is to explore the relative role of hydrologic model calibration and climate scenarios in the uncertainty of low-flow projections in Austria.

In the paper, observations are assimilated into a hydrological model in order to improve the model performance. Two methods for detecting and correcting systematic errors (bias) in groundwater head observations are used leading to improved results compared to standard assimilation methods which ignores any bias. This is demonstrated using both synthetic (user generated) observations and real-world observations.

In this study, the influence of surface water–groundwater interaction on the nutrient flux in a lowland karst catchment in western Ireland was investigated with the aid of alkalinity sampling and a hydrological model. Results indicated that denitrification within a number of ephemeral lakes is the main process reducing nitrogen concentrations within the turloughs, whereas phosphorus loss is thought to occur mostly via sedimentation and subsequent soil deposition.