Groundwater sustain-ability in the Friuli Plain

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Publication Date

January 2013

Abstract

Groundwater resources in the Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) Region (northeast Italy) are an important natural wealth in terms of quantity, quality and ease of supply. This optimal condition, however, has long believed that it allowed an irrational and uncon-trolled exploitation that inevitably produced tangible consequences on the water resources availability. The goal of the present research is the evaluation of groundwater sustainability in the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region aimed at providing guide-lines for its rational use. The studied area belongs to the hydrogeological basin of the Friuli Plain and includes part of Veneto Region and Slovenia. The plain area is divided in two parts: the High Plain (HP) characterized by a phreatic aquifer and the Low Plain (LP) where eleven confined aquifer systems were identified. The two physiographic zones are separated by the resurgence belt. In order to evaluate the groundwater avaliability, a 3D model of the Low Friuli Plain aquifer systems was realized using Rockworks R14 software, starting from 603 lithostratigraphic wells data. Isobath and isopach maps were elaborated using kriging geostatistical method. Precipitation, evapotranspiration, runoff and infiltration were calcu-lated to evaluate the inflow and outflow groundwater budget terms (109 rainfall and 46 thermometric stations, time series 1979-2008). To better define the river influences and the outflows at sea, a series of recent surveys on river discharges and surface withdrawals were considered. To obtain the water-budget in non-natural conditions, as the cur-rents, were taken into account the groundwater withdrawals that were evaluated for each type of use and for each aquifer systems, starting from 2 geodatabases: one for the domestic uses (50101 es-timated wells) and one for the industrial, agricultural, fish breed-ing, hygienic, geothermal and other minor uses (7594 wells). Well withdrawals amount were evaluated on annual base for recent peri-ods and expressed as m 3 /s. The total current estimated groundwater

Document Type

Article

Notes

Aqua Mundi, Vol. 4 (2013).

Identifier

SFS0071880_00001

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