DROUGHT IN INTERGRANULAR AQUIFIERS IN 2019 AND 2020

Abstract

Groundwater level analysis at the selected monitoring locations of hydrological groundwater monitoring network has shown that the prevalence of extreme groundwater drought events has been increasing over the years. The groundwater levels in intergranular aquifers in Slovenia in 2019 and 2020 decreased below the extreme drought threshold limit most frequently in the Ljubljana and Savinja basin aquifers. 2020 was drier than the previous year, as 2020 was one of the 5th driest years in terms of the spatial distribution of extreme groundwater drought events in Slovenia – a higher prevalence of extreme drought events was recorded only in 2002, 2003 , 2012 and 1989. Extreme groundwater drought devastated the Savinja Basin aquifers in the first two months of 2019, while in the Ljubljana basin aquifers, drought was monitored mostly between August and October. In 2020, the period between May and September was considered the driest with regard to groundwater quantity. The reason for the severe and extreme groundwater droughts in 2019 and 2020 was mainly the uneven temporal and spatial distribution of groundwater recharge resulting from the percolation of precipitation, which led to longer condensed periods of groundwater level decline.