HydrO-17 · Improving water management in semi-arid regions: Insights in hydrological and environmental controls of lakes using triple oxygen isotopes
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-10-01 → 2024-09-30
- EU contribution
- €165,313
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Improving water management in semi-arid regions: Insights in hydrological and environmental controls of lakes using triple oxygen isotopes
Water is essential for life, the economy, and climate regulation, yet its scarcity is intensifying due to population growth, urbanization, and economic development. Water shortages are particularly remarkable in arid and semi-arid areas like the Mediterranean, where low rainfall and high evaporation severely limit water availability. This is especially pronounced in arid and semi-arid regions like the Mediterranean, where low rainfall and high evaporation severely limit water availability. Southern Spain faces a serious water crisis due to decades of overexploitation of groundwater for agriculture, leading to a lower water table, saltwater intrusion in coastal aquifers, and ecosystem degradation, all of which are projected to worsen with climate change. In this context, sustainable water management depends on a thorough understanding of hydrological systems and their responses to environmental changes. Lakes in semi-arid regions play a critical role as water resources for agriculture and industry and as wildlife habitats, yet little is known about their hydrological functioning, and quantitative approaches to evaluate their water balances and climate sensitivity are underutilized. The HydrO-17 project addresses this gap by using hydrochemical monitoring and innovative stable isotope geochemistry tools to study lake water balances and responses to climate change. Additionally, the project’s findings will support improved paleoclimate interpretations from sediment archives, informing water management strategies for long-term ecosystem health.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Lakes provide an important water resource for agricultural and industrial purposes, and form a critical habitat for plants and animals. Understanding the hydrological functioning of lakes is fundamental to understand hydrological feedbacks related to changing environmental conditions in the context of current climate change and also of increasing importance for environmental policy. Stable isotope ratios of water (2H/1H, 18O/16O) are widely used in lake hydrology studies, providing information on the hydrological balance of lake systems. However, in cases where the system is under-defined, a full quantitative assessment of the lake’s hydrological balance is challenging. Recent investigations have demonstrated that the additional analysis of the rare oxygen-17 isotope can provide additional quantitative information about the hydrological and environmental conditions during lake evaporation. The HydrO-17 Project will explore the potential of the triple oxygen isotope analysis (18O, 17O, 16O), expressed as 17O-excess, for quantitative hydrological balancing of lakes by examining the seasonal isotope evolution of hydrologically different lake systems in the Andalusian lowlands, Southern Spain, where agricultural overexploitation of groundwater aquifers over the last decades led to a severe water deficit. Current climate change will further intensify these problems. The results of the project will contribute to the understanding of the hydrological functioning of lake systems in Andalusia, with implications for local water management strategies. The approach has potential application to lakes in other regions in the world. The outcomes will also help to improve the interpretation of paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental information obtained from paleo-lake sediment archives.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSIDAD DE ALMERIA · ALMERIACoordinatorSpain
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101063961
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e510b6946b&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5f9df3d03&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union