Applied Modeling Techniques and Data Analysis 1

12 Groundwater Level Forecasting for Water Resource Management

The actual increase of groundwater demand, which, in the Mediterranean regions, depends on several natural (e.g. climate change) and human factors (e.g. agriculture, domestic and industrial use), is the cause of depauperating in both the quantity and quality of the groundwater resource. Analysis of the groundwater level time series data and predicting future trends could be an alternative way, with respect to local numerical groundwater models, to manage water use in large areas, promoting sustainable development and identifying causes of water level decline. In order to forecast groundwater trends and show the usefulness of such methodology for decision-makers, we have studied a small area located on the Tuscan coast (Italy). Results of the integrated time series analysis not only give information about future hydrologic trends, but can also be useful in understanding possible climate change and related effects in hydrologic system.

12.1. Introduction

Groundwater resource management is one of the most important pillars for civil, agricultural and industrial development. In these contexts, groundwater overexploitation is one of the main societal challenges, in particular for coastal areas where overexploitation may induce fast impoverishment and also affect groundwater quality due to seawater intrusion (Alfarrah and Walraevens 2018). Moreover, overexploitation not only impacts groundwater quality and quantity, but ...