Quantifying the impact of pumping on groundwater heads using observation data and advanced time series analysis

Abstract

The dynamics of groundwater levels within unconfined aquifers are often the result of numerous and interacting factors, such as land cover change, climate variability and groundwater pumping. For such unconfined aquifers, estimating the impact from pumping is highly significant for resource management but also very challenging. To date, in Australia, the HARTT multiple linear regression methodology (Ferdowsian et al. 2001) has been widely used to estimate the impact of climate variability on groundwater levels. Recently, transfer function noise (TFN) models have been developed to better link water table dynamics with different types of individual stresses, including pumping (von Asmuth et al..