New insights from an enhancement of hydrogeological archives of a French karst watershed over the last 50 years

Abstract

Karst aquifers, like most hydrological systems, are sensitive to the influence of changes in land use as well as current and future climate change. To be able to identify the effects of these changes, in particular on the variability of groundwater flows, we have endeavored to produce one of the longest hourly spring discharge time series available for a French karst watershed. This reconstitution is based on a digitisation of the limnigraphic archives available for the Baget karst watershed. Correlation, spectral and multifractal analyses were then performed based on the spring discharge time series to confirm the multiscale nature of the hydrological response of this basin and to highlight the non-stationarity of this response.

Keywords

• Digitalisation
• Data analysis
• Karst system
• Hydrogeology
• Spectral analysis
• Multifractal analysis