The application of hydrogeophysics to study water-based ecosystem services in alluvial plains

摘要

The relevance of groundwater-based ecosystem services (MEA 2005) for mankind is largely recognized in the scientific community, but also among professionals and regulators. The engines of decision support tools for managing, protecting and restoring groundwater resources are predictive models of groundwater flow and solute transport, possibly integrated with monitoring networks and with tools for the modelling and monitoring of surface waters and surface/ground water interactions. Despite the availability of very complex numerical models, reliable predictions depend on the knowledge of the geological and hydrostratigraphic structure and of the heterogeneity of the subsurface at different scales. A contribution of paramount importance to such a characterization comes from hydro- geophysics (see, e.g., Rubin and Hubbard, 2006), i.e., from the application of geophysical exploration methods to the reconstruction of the hydrostratigraphic structure and to the determination of the hydrodynamic (e.g., hydraulic conductivity) and hydrodispersive (e.g., dispersivity) parameters.