In the context of global change, the sustainability of water resources is a growing concern, especially in agriculture. Aquifers are a critical resource that must be modelled to evaluate their long-term sustainability and guide water management decisions.
This requires models that accurately represent groundwater dynamics and their interactions with surface water. However, most existing models are calibrated using groundwater levels alone, relying on simplified assumptions about recharge, aquifer geometry, and boundary conditions. These limitations reduce model reliability under conditions outside the calibration period, particularly for global change scenario analysis.
We propose a hydrogeological modelling approach that integrates detailed spatio-temporal recharge estimates derived from isotopic tracing and surface water modelling. This approach will be applied to the Crau aquifer, where an existing hydrogeological model, long-term geochemical, isotopic and piezometric records, and distributed recharge estimates from local crop models are already available. The main objective is to assess the added value of this integrated approach compared to existing models, and to evaluate its improved robustness for long-term simulations under global change conditions.
Start date: October 2023