QUANTITATIVE STATUS OF GROUNDWATER IN 2017

Abstract

A comparison of the average annual groundwater quantity against the long-term average shows that the groundwater quantity status in 2017 was not out of the ordinary. However, a more detailed insight into the fluctuation in water levels and discharges reveals substantial local deviations in water quantity from the typical monthly and seasonal values. During the summer, extremely low water quantities were recorded at aquifers in certain parts of eastern Slovenia. Groundwater resources in gravel and sand aquifers in the Krško and Brežice basin, and in Karst river basins supplying the sources of the rivers Krka and Radeščica at Dolenjski Karst, had especially low water quantities. Extremely unfavourable conditions for recharging the aquifers in the Krško basin and part of the Brežice basin with the infiltration of precipitation were alleviated, and in some areas eliminated, by the artificially changed regime of groundwater level fluctuation resulting from the damming of the river Sava at Brežice.