Assessing the vulnerability of groundwater to pollution in Ireland based on the COST-620 Pan-European approach
2014
Pavlis, Michail | Cummins, Enda
The aim of the analysis was to assess the intrinsic and specific vulnerability of groundwater to pollution from pesticides in Ireland at the national scale. A methodology to incorporate the effect of groundwater recharge in vulnerability assessment is described which can be particularly useful for the evaluation of dilution of groundwater pollutants. A sensitivity analysis using Monte-Carlo simulation revealed that the most important parameters of the model were subsoil (ρ = 0.79) and topsoil (ρ = 0.72), which is in agreement with the current knowledge of the parameters that have a significant effect on groundwater vulnerability in Ireland. The intrinsic vulnerability assessment was verified using total organic carbon (TOC) concentration in groundwater, a novel approach for the validation of groundwater vulnerability methods at regional scales. A statistical analysis showed that TOC concentration was significantly different (p < 0.001) between watersheds classified as highly vulnerable and watersheds classified as less vulnerable, providing evidence that the developed method can effectively classify karst areas in terms of groundwater vulnerability.
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