Geohydrology of a Reference Mediterranean Catchment (Cilento UNESCO Geopark, Southern Italy)

Domenico Guida,Albina Cuomo,Paolo Villani,Antonia Longobardi

doi:10.3390/app10124117

Abstract

In this paper, we studied the geo-hydrological structure and behavior of a reference catchment, located in the Cilento UNESCO Global Geopark, southern Italy, representative of the hilly, terrigenous and forested headwaters of the Mediterranean eco-region. Based on detailed hydrogeological and hydro-geomorphological surveys and geomorphometric analysis, starting in 2012, a hydro-chemical monitoring activity at the catchment and sub-catchment scale started, and a hydro-chemical dataset was progressively recorded at daily and sub-hourly time steps. Based on this dataset, the authors performed an original procedure to identify different runoff components, derived by applying cascade mass balance filtering. The integration of hydrological and geomorphological approaches allowed us to obtain an interesting conceptualization of the storm flow generation using hydro-chemical signatures related to different runoff components produced during the increasing–decreasing cycle of the flood event magnitude. The hydro-system activated progressively different runoff sources (i.e., groundwater, riparian corridor, hillslope and hollow) and involved various mechanisms (i.e., groundwater ridging, saturation-excess, infiltration-excess and soil pipe exfiltration). The geo-hydrological conceptualization was validated using a hysteresis Q-EC loop analysis performed on selected events that showed how hysteretic indices could be used to characterize the events in respect to their origins, mechanisms and pathways in similar catchments.

Highlights

The Mediterranean river eco-system equilibrium greatly depends on aquifer feedings and surface–groundwater functional interactions [1]
In the case of a Q-electrical conductivity (EC) relationship, hysteretic behavior is strongly dependent on the nature of the event [49]
A coherent result was obtained for the events of the 19th and 22nd of September 2016 and the 6th of November 2017, which exhibited a negative h index; the other affected events had an h index >0

Summary

Introduction

The Mediterranean river eco-system equilibrium greatly depends on aquifer feedings and surface–groundwater functional interactions [1] The assessment of their ecological services requires interdisciplinary approaches, the integration of monitoring systems and inter-institutional planning and management. This complexity is evident in protected areas, where institutional protocols (e.g., derived from the European Water Framework Directive WFD, [2]) require the implementation of appropriate activities related to geodiversity–biodiversity relationships [3].

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion