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AQUIGROW - sustainable AQUIfer recharge to enhance resilience of GROundWater services under
increased drought risk
The general objectives of AQUIGROW are to: i) quantify current recharge fluxes in several study aquifers used for irrigation and/or drinking water supply in Europe, Israel and South Africa; ii) identify critical issues in the sustainable management of these aquifers, both in terms of water quantity and quality, related to current practices, planned land use changes and predicted climate change scenarios; iii) develop numerical tools and management solutions to improve recharge fluxes and their quality, as to increase available groundwater storage and preserve its use especially in times of drought. Project AQUIGROW will reach these goals by: i) providing stakeholders with advanced integrated surface subsurface hydrological models (ISSHMs), incorporating main plant processes (biomass accumulation and water uptake) and complemented by anthropogenic process models (i.e., traditional and precision irrigation and land management practices) assisted by the latest Earth Observation data; ii) testing and deploying managed aquifer recharge (MAR) techniques, including unconventional soil aquifer treatment (SAT), in several pilot sites representative of European, Middle East and African landscapes, to investigate their sustainability in terms of water quantity and quality; iii) identify and assess barriers related to social and cultural acceptance of MAR and SAT and to policy regulatory frameworks and propose ways to overcome them. Our driving principle is the joint management of blue (i.e., water of aquifers, lakes, and rivers) and green water (i.e., soil moisture) resources for identifying and solving critical issues related to hydrological, agricultural, socio-economic and ecological droughts, resulting in a joint framework that can ultimately allow for satisfying the multiple demands of quality water for water abstractions, environmental flows and crop water requirements.
The implementation of the project will be of great importance for the recognition of the Gdańsk University of Technology in the area related to sustainable water management and mitigation of the effects of climate change. An important aspect is also the development of international cooperation and high-quality publications with the university's affiliation.
Details
- Project's acronym:
- AQUIGROW
- Financial Program Name:
- European Partnership Water Security for the Planet (Water4All)
- Organization:
- Narodowe Centrum Badań i Rozwoju (NCBR) (The National Centre for Research and Development)
- Agreement:
- WATER4ALL/I/37/AQUIGROW/2024 z dnia 2024-07-30
- Realisation period:
- unknown - unknown
- Research team leader:
- prof. dr hab. inż. Adam Szymkiewicz
- Realised in:
- Department of Geotechnical and Hydraulic Engineering
- External institutions
participating in project: -
- Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy)
- INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE POUR L'AGRICULTURE, L'ALIMENTATION ET L'ENVIRONNEMENT (France)
- TECHNION - ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (Israel)
- Stellenbosch University (South Africa)
- UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA (Italy)
- Request type:
- International Research Programmes
- Domestic:
- International project
- Verified by:
- Gdańsk University of Technology
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