Configuration of quality control network of coastal groundwater bodies by model of hydrosectors specific case of Campo de Cartagena (Murcia, Spain)

Abstract

The design of groundwater quality control networks must be based, fundamentally, on an index of optimal average density of sampling points per surface of groundwater body (hereinafter, MSBT), estimated at 1 point per 50 km2 , and defining some hydrosectors with homologated conditions as hexagonal cells, in each of which a selection of equivalent control stations with analytically harmonized series is made in order to be able to extend the historical series of quality data of the extractions of water sampling, to improve periodicity and monitoring through possible concatenations and / or overlaps between said simultaneous co-series obtained (between 2 or more series), and define associations of sectoral stations that maintain comparable concentrations of anthropic components, at least for a sampling period within the same hydrogeologically homogeneous sector. These concepts are accompanied by the introduction of a precise formulation through the adoption of new statistical indices that would be applied to the different masses of groundwater but, mainly, to one of the coastal MSBTs that presents one of the greatest management complexities, among other external causes, to its complicated intrinsic hydrogeological structure (heterogeneity and anisotropy), such as the Campo de Cartagena MSBT. The objective is to establish a statistical modeling framework that helps us improve the evaluation of the status and chemical quality of groundwater bodies, in general, but, this time, not only on the unique interpretation of the isolated data series of each of the control stations definable in time, but rather by evaluating the correlation between these co-series assigned to the same hydrosector with homologous conditions, as well as in the interrelation between the different hydrosectors belonging to the same aquifer, and for each of the aquifers within the same complex structure groundwater body.