The Groundwater Drought Initiative (GDI)

在英国，地下水提供了相当大比例的供水，在英格兰南部、东南部和东部的许多地区，地下水提供了我们大部分的生活用水。它是英国农业灌溉和工业的重要来源。它支持许多英国最具标志性的河流的流动，如奇尔特恩斯和南北唐斯的白垩溪，维护健康的生态系统，并提供舒适的价值和支持与这些依赖地下水的河流相关的生计。如果管理得当，它是一种可靠、有弹性的水源。然而，由于降雨量的自然年际变化，它很容易受到重大干旱的影响。例如，在2010-12年英国上一次严重的地下水干旱期间，英格兰南部和东部的七家自来水公司不得不在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用水限制的严重不利影响。因此，有必要更好地了解地下水干旱及其影响，以支持改进英国地下水干旱的规划和管理。地下水干旱的定义是低于正常的地下水水平，具有一些不受欢迎的影响，如钻孔减少地下水产量，依赖地下水的河流干涸，从而对野生动物和生计造成影响。自然环境研究理事会目前正在资助“英国干旱和缺水计划”，提供具有战略意义的研究，以改善英国干旱时期的特征和预测。然而，重大旱灾需要时间才能发展并影响大片地区。例如，当英国出现长期的地下水干旱时，例如2010-12年，同样的干旱也会影响欧洲大陆的大部分地区。因此，通过了解欧洲范围内重大干旱的发展和影响，将对英国产生重大好处。然而，目前欧洲各地没有协调相关的地下水信息或地下水干旱研究，目前无法在欧洲大陆范围内监测地下水干旱状况或评估其影响。该项目名为地下水干旱倡议(GDI)，旨在解决这些缺陷，从而显著改善英国和欧洲大陆的地下水干旱特征和影响评估。GDI将在目前NERC英国干旱和缺水计划中由NERC资助的两个现有项目(历史性干旱和推动力项目)的基础上发展并增加其价值，并将与来自奥地利BOKU、法国鲁昂大学、德国弗莱堡大学、挪威奥斯陆大学、荷兰瓦格宁根大学、斯洛伐克夸美纽斯大学和西班牙CIC以及欧洲其他研究人员的合作伙伴合作。GDI将编制和发布第一份泛欧洲地下水干旱状况评估报告(从1960年至今)，并将分析欧洲最近的地下水干旱情况。GDI将调查地下水干旱对人们意味着什么--通过将新的欧洲规模地下水干旱状况评估的结果与现有在线数据库(欧洲干旱影响报告清单，EDII)中保存的有关最近干旱的影响的信息进行比较，首次系统地调查最近地下水干旱的影响。GDI所有活动的核心将是建立一个新的网络，以协调整个欧洲的地下水干旱专家以及相关数据和信息的工作，确保传播、使用和维护共同资源，使今后能够对地下水干旱进行有影响的研究。

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.