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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Water
Sec. Water and Critical Zone
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frwa.2024.1399170
This article is part of the Research Topic Groundwater Vulnerability: Modern Experimental, Modeling, and Mapping Methods View all articles

Using index and physically-based models to evaluate the intrinsic groundwater vulnerability to non-point source pollutants in an agricultural area in Sardinia (Italy)

Provisionally accepted
Maria C. Porru Maria C. Porru 1Shawkat Basel Mostafa Hassan Shawkat Basel Mostafa Hassan 2*Mostafa Saeed Mohamed Abdelmaqsoud Mostafa Saeed Mohamed Abdelmaqsoud 2Andrea Vacca Andrea Vacca 1Stefania Da Pelo Stefania Da Pelo 1Antonio Coppola Antonio Coppola 1,2
  • 1 Department of Chemical and Geological Sciences, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy
  • 2 School of Agricultural, Forestry, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Basilicata, Potenza, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This research aims at studying the intrinsic vulnerability of groundwater to diffuse environmental pollutants in the Muravera coastal agricultural area of Sardinia, Italy. The area faces contamination risks arising from agricultural practices, especially the use of fertilizers, pesticides, and various chemicals that can seep into the groundwater. The study examined the interplay among hydrological elements, including soil characteristics, groundwater depth, climate conditions, land use, and aquifer properties. To do that, the outcomes of FLOWS 1D physically-based agrohydrological model were analyzed in parallel with those of the overlay-and-index model SINTACS, in a sort of reciprocal benchmarking. By using FLOWS, water movement and solute transport in the unsaturated zone were simulated by respectively solving the Richard Equation (RE) and the Advection-Dispersion equation (ADE). As such, this model allowed to account for the role of soil hydraulic and hydro-dispersive properties variability in determining the travel times of a conservative solute through the soil profile to the groundwater. For FLOWS simulations, a complete dataset was used as input, including soil horizons, soil physical and hydraulic properties of 36 soil profiles, average annual depth to groundwater table at each soil profile (ranging from 1 to 50 meters), and climatic temporal series data on rainfall and evapotranspiration. Detailed analyses of travel times for the movement of 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the solute mass to reach groundwater were conducted, revealing that the depth to groundwater predominantly influences vulnerability. This result was coherent with SINTACS vulnerability map due to the large impact of the depth to groundwater on SINTACS analysis.

    Keywords: Groundwater vulnerability1, agrohydrological modelling2, soil water flow3, solute transport4, weightoverlay-and-score index modelling5, hydrogeological modelling6

    Received: 11 Mar 2024; Accepted: 25 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Porru, Hassan, Abdelmaqsoud, Vacca, Da Pelo and Coppola. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Shawkat Basel Mostafa Hassan, School of Agricultural, Forestry, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Basilicata, Potenza, Italy

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