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- The water crisis in southern Portugal: how did we get there and how should we solve itPublication . Nunes, Luís; Monteiro, José Paulo; Cunha, Maria da Conceição; Vieira, João; Lucas, Helena; Ribeiro, LuísUntil very recently, public water supply in the Algarve region was almost entirely supported by groundwater wells. However, in the last years of the XX Century, the Portuguese central administration defined a scheme for the public water supply sector entirely based in surface water from large dams, in order to guarantee the public water supply. The efforts to abandon groundwater as a source for public supply started in 1998, after a large investment in new infrastructures and rehabilitation of other ones. However, the practical implementation of this water supply scheme showed that an integrated resource management is needed in order to implement a more economical and reliable solution. The present paper describes the historical background and the evolution of water use in the last decades until the present time in the Algarve, and a proposal for restructuring the management of the water supplies based in the development of a decision support system in the scope of an integrated water resources management.
- Integration of managed aquifer recharge into the water supply system in the Algarve region, PortugalPublication . Standen, Kathleen; Costa, Luís; Hugman, Rui; Monteiro, José PauloThe Algarve region of Portugal is experiencing severe water scarcity with existing water supplies insufficient to meet demand, with limited resilience to drought. Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) can provide intermediate storage and bridge the gap between water availability and demand, with success depending on the water available and the aquifer capacity to accept and store the water. We present the results of a regional study quantifying both these aspects to estimate the regional potential for MAR. Our results demonstrate that MAR can comprise 10% of the total water demand of the region (24 Mm3/yr) using water that is not otherwise captured, with quality that meets the requirements of the Groundwater Directive. MAR can replace 15 Mm3/yr of surface water used in the public irrigation perimeters and 9 Mm3/yr can be used to develop and maintain a strategic groundwater resource in the aquifers of the Central Algarve. Although climate change is predicted to result in an 8–13% decrease in MAR recharge, this can be addressed by incrementally increasing MAR design capacity. MAR has similar water resource benefits to the planned major infrastructure projects (desalination and River Guadiana abstraction), with reduced environmental impacts and lower costs than almost all feasible alternatives. We conclude that MAR is an important measure to increase water supply security and drought resilience in the Algarve region.
- Integration of managed aquifer recharge into the water supply system in the Algarve region, PortugalPublication . Standen, Kathleen; Costa, Luís; Hugman, Rui; Monteiro, José PauloThe Algarve region of Portugal is experiencing severe water scarcity with existing water supplies insufficient to meet demand, with limited resilience to drought. Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) can provide intermediate storage and bridge the gap between water availability and demand, with success depending on the water available and the aquifer capacity to accept and store the water. We present the results of a regional study quantifying both these aspects to estimate the regional potential for MAR. Our results demonstrate that MAR can comprise 10% of the total water demand of the region (24 Mm(3)/yr) using water that is not otherwise captured, with quality that meets the requirements of the Groundwater Directive. MAR can replace 15 Mm(3)/yr of surface water used in the public irrigation perimeters and 9 Mm(3)/yr can be used to develop and maintain a strategic groundwater resource in the aquifers of the Central Algarve. Although climate change is predicted to result in an 8-13% decrease in MAR recharge, this can be addressed by incrementally increasing MAR design capacity. MAR has similar water resource benefits to the planned major infrastructure projects (desalination and River Guadiana abstraction), with reduced environmental impacts and lower costs than almost all feasible alternatives. We conclude that MAR is an important measure to increase water supply security and drought resilience in the Algarve region.