Optimal Management of an Overexploited Aquifer under Climate Change: The Lake Karla Case

Abstract

This paper presents a study for finding the optimal management plan of an overexploited aquifer under global climate change. The study area is the aquifer of the basin of Lake Karla, located in the eastern part of Thessaly in Greece. An optimization method has been used to evaluate the optimum volume of water that can be extracted from the aquifer and the optimum position of the wells with the objective of water table rise to a desirable sustainable level, taking into consideration the climate change forcing. The modelling system consists of a series of interlinked models: a hydrological, a lake-aquifer, a reservoir operation, a groundwater, and an optimization model. The climate change forcing on precipitation and temperature has been evaluated using the outputs of Canadian Centre for Climate Model Analysis General Circulation Model (CGCMa2) and a hybrid downscaling method which combines a multiple regression (MLR) model and a timeseries model for two socioeconomic emissions scenarios. The results of this study show that climate change plays an important role, as it affects the optimum volume of the extracted groundwater and the position of the irrigation wells.