Integrated Water Resources Analysis at Basin Scale: A Case Study in Greece

Abstract

The hydrological and hydrogeological setting of a watershed, along with its spatial groundwater distribution, is very important for water resources management purposes. In addition, these factors are the bases for modeling applications. The Mires Basin, which is located on the Island of Crete, has marginal groundwater resources that are extensively used for agricultural activities and human consumption. A broad network of pumping stations was installed in 1984, and as a result productivity has risen at the price of an alarming drop of approximately 35 m in groundwater level during the last 30 years. This study reviews the hydrological and hydrogeological settings of the basin using the most recent available data, explains the declining groundwater level in terms of a statistical and a physically based approach depending on the basin’s groundwater balance, and presents the groundwater level spatial distribution. The latter is obtained by employing the Box-Cox normalization method to increase the accuracy of interpolation, and the recently proposed Spartan variogram function, which delivers improved spatial dependence inference.