The Groundwater Drought Initiative (GDI)

地下水在英国的供水中占很大比例，在英格兰南部、东南部和东部的许多地区，地下水也是我们生活用水的主要来源。它是英国农业灌溉和工业的重要来源。它支持英国许多最具标志性的河流的流动，如奇异果河和南唐斯河的白垩流，维持健康的生态系统，提供舒适价值，并支持与这些依赖地下水的河流相关的生计。如果管理得当，它是一个可靠的，有弹性的水源。然而，由于降雨量的自然年复一年变化，它很容易受到严重干旱的影响。例如，在2010年至2012年英国最后一次重大地下水干旱期间，英格兰南部和东部的七家水务公司不得不在2012年春季对大约2000万人实施临时使用禁令（俗称“软管禁令”），环境和农业部门也受到限制用水的严重不利影响。因此，有必要更好地了解地下水干旱及其影响，以支持改善英国地下水干旱的规划和管理。地下水干旱被定义为地下水低于正常水平，并产生一些不受欢迎的影响，例如井眼地下水产量减少，依赖地下水的河流干涸，从而对野生动物和生计产生影响。自然环境研究理事会目前正在资助“联合王国干旱和水资源短缺方案”，提供具有战略意义的研究，以改善联合王国干旱事件的特征和预测。然而，大规模的干旱需要时间才能形成并影响到大片地区。例如，当英国发生长期地下水干旱时，例如2010-12年，同样的干旱也影响到欧洲大陆的大部分地区。因此，通过了解欧洲范围内主要干旱的发展和影响，英国将获得重大利益。然而，目前没有协调相关的地下水信息或地下水干旱研究在整个欧洲，目前地下水干旱状况无法监测或其影响评估在大陆规模。这个项目，地下水干旱倡议（GDI），旨在解决这些缺点，导致显着改善地下水干旱表征和影响评估为英国和欧洲大陆。GDI将建立在两个现有的NERC资助项目的基础上并为其增值（历史性干旱和IMPETUS项目），并将与来自奥地利博库大学、法国鲁昂大学、德国弗赖堡大学、挪威奥斯陆大学、荷兰瓦赫宁根大学、斯洛伐克夸美纽斯大学、和CISC，西班牙以及欧洲其他研究人员。GDI将编制和出版第一份泛欧地下水干旱状况评估报告（1960年至今），并将分析欧洲最近的地下水干旱情况。全球干旱指数将调查地下水干旱对人类的影响-通过将新的欧洲范围地下水干旱状况评估结果与现有在线数据库（欧洲干旱影响报告目录，EDII）中有关以往近期干旱影响的信息进行比较，首次系统地调查近期地下水干旱的影响。GDI所有活动的核心将是建立一个新的网络，以协调整个欧洲地下水干旱专家的工作和相关数据和信息，确保共同资源的传播，使用和维护，以便未来对地下水干旱进行有影响力的研究。

Groundwater provides a significant proportion of water supplies in the UK and the majority of our domestic water in many parts of southern, south-eastern and eastern England. It is an important source for agricultural irrigation and for industry in the UK. It supports flow in many of the UKs most iconic rivers, such as the Chalk streams of the Chilterns and the North and South Downs, maintaining healthy ecosystems, and providing amenity value and supporting livelihoods associated with those groundwater-dependent rivers. When managed appropriately, it is a dependable, resilient source of water. However, due to natural year-on-year variations in rainfall, it is susceptible to major droughts. For example, during the last major groundwater drought in the UK in 2010-12 seven water companies in south and east England had to impose temporary use bans (colloquially known as 'hosepipe bans') on about 20 million people in spring of 2012 with the environment and farming sectors also significantly adversely affected by restrictions on their use of water. Consequently, there is a need for a much better understanding of groundwater droughts and their impacts to support improvement in planning for and managing groundwater droughts in the UK. Groundwater droughts are defined as below normal levels of groundwater and have a number of unwelcome effects, such as reduced production of groundwater from boreholes, and the drying up of groundwater-dependent rivers with resulting implications for wildlife and livelihoods. The Natural Environment Research Council is currently funding the 'UK Droughts and Water Scarcity Programme' providing strategically important research to improve characterisation and prediction of episodes of drought in the UK. However, major episodes of drought take time to develop and affect large areas. For example, when there is a long groundwater drought in the UK, e.g. 2010-12, that same drought also affects large parts of continental Europe. As a result, there is significant benefit to be gained for the UK by understanding the development and impacts of major droughts at the European scale. However, there is currently no co-ordination of relevant groundwater information or groundwater drought research across Europe, and currently groundwater drought status cannot be monitored or its impacts assessed at the continental scale. This project, the Groundwater Drought Initiative (GDI), aims to address these shortcomings leading to significant improvements in groundwater drought characterization and impact assessment for the UK and continental Europe. The GDI will build on and add value to two existing NERC-funded projects (the Historic Droughts and IMPETUS projects) in the current NERC UK Droughts and Water Scarcity Programme and will work with partners from BOKU, Austria; University of Rouen, France; University of Freiburg, Germany; University of Oslo, Norway; Wageningen University, Netherlands; Comenius University, Slovakia; and, CISC, Spain as well as other researchers across Europe. The GDI will produce and publish the first pan-European assessment of groundwater drought status (from 1960 to present), and will analyse the most recent European groundwater droughts. The GDI will investigate what groundwater droughts mean for people - for the first time systematically investigating the impacts of recent groundwater droughts by comparing the results of the new European-scale groundwater drought status assessments with information about impacts of previous recent droughts held in an existing on-line database (the European Drought Impact Report Inventory, EDII). Central to all the activities of the GDI will be the establishment of a new network to co-ordinate the work of groundwater drought specialists and related data and information across Europe, ensuring the dissemination, use and maintenance of the common resources to enable future impactful research into groundwater droughts.