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Identification of a karst system’s intrinsic hydrodynamic parameters: upscaling from single springs to the whole aquifer

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Abstract

For water management purposes, information about an entire aquifer system is generally more important than information about a specific spring. Since a karstic aquifer system might drain to several outlets, conclusions derived from a single spring can be misleading for characterization and modeling. In this study we apply a conceptual model to an Alpine dolomite karst system in Austria. The particular challenge was that several small springs with strongly varying hydrological behavior and diffuse flow into surrounding streams drain this system. Instead of applying the model to a single spring, it was calibrated simultaneously to several observations within the system aiming to identify the karst system’s intrinsic hydrodynamic parameters. Parameter identification is supported by modeling the transport of water isotopes (δ18O). The parameters were transferred to the whole system with a simple upscaling procedure and a sensitivity analysis was performed to unfold influence of isotopic information on parameter sensitivity and simulation uncertainty. The results show that it is possible to identify system intrinsic parameters. But the sensitivity analysis revealed that some are hardly identifiable. Only by considering uncertainty reasonable predictions can be provided for the whole system. Including isotopic information increases the sensitivity of some intrinsic parameters, but it goes along with a sensitivity decrease for others. However, a possible reduction of prediction uncertainty by isotopic information is compensated by deficiencies in the transport modeling routines.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Maria-Theresia Grabner, Thomas Dirnböck, Florian Wenter and Johannes Kobler from the Environment Agency, Austria, for providing their data and valuable advice, to the measurement team, Manuela Nied, Nicole Jackisch, Matthias Ritter, Benjamin Gralher and Julien Farlin, for their brave encouragement in taking samples and measuring runoff during the rainfall-runoff event, to Irene Kohn and Jürgen Strub from the Institute of Hydrology for reviewing the paper and designing the figures and to Juraj Parajka from the Institut für Wasserbau und Ingenieurhydrologie, Technische Universität Wien, for providing information to calibrate the snow routine.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Hydrology, Freiburg University, Fahnenbergplatz, 79098, Freiburg, Germany

    Andreas Hartmann, Jens Lange & Markus Weiler

  2. Umweltbundesamt, Environment Agency Austria, Spittelauer Lände 5, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    Martin Kralik & Franko Humer

Authors
  1. Andreas Hartmann
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  2. Martin Kralik
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  3. Franko Humer
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  4. Jens Lange
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Correspondence to Andreas Hartmann.

Appendix

Appendix

The snow routine uses a day degree factor DDF and a melt temperature T M. In addition, a snow correction factor SCF was defined to attribute for the catch deficit of the precipitation gages. With a threshold temperature interval T R–T S a mixture of rain and snow was allowed. Hereby T R is the temperature above which precipitation only occurs in liquid form, while T S is the temperature below which precipitation is exclusively snow. Hence, if the air temperature T A falls below T R, a part of the precipitation is stored a snow. If T A falls below T S , all precipitation is stored as snow until T A exceeds again T M. A detailed description including all equations can be found in Parajka et al. (2007). Table 6 shows the optimized snow storage parameters. The Calibration boundaries were set by prior knowledge provided by Parajka et al. (2007). Sporadic snow water equivalent observations provided by the Federal Environmental Agency, Austria, were used for calibration with the SCE algorithm.

Table 6 Optimized snow storage parameters
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Hartmann, A., Kralik, M., Humer, F. et al. Identification of a karst system’s intrinsic hydrodynamic parameters: upscaling from single springs to the whole aquifer. Environ Earth Sci 65, 2377–2389 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-011-1033-9

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