Monitoring and Assessing the Characteristics of Groundwater Drought in Aquifers with Negative Balance

Although, many studies have been reported on meteorological drought monitoring and analysis, similar studies on groundwater drought in regions with high abstractions are lacking. In this paper, the effects of groundwater extraction of aquifer were investigated and groundwater drought analysis was performed using the naturalized groundwater level time series in Qazvin plain. For this purpose, MODFLOW-ANN coupled model were used to obtain the time series of naturalized groundwater level over a 50 year and a 3 year period. Then, Groundwater drought was monitored by means of the SGI and was compared with the SPI and SHDI indices. Also, drought characteristics were calculated along 50 year period and the regions with more hazard of drought were determined. Results showed that abstraction could cause severe negative trend in the groundwater level. The aquifer was in long duration dry condition at about 47% of the time. Groundwater level changes have a 9 months delay with changing in precipitation and flow rivers. Groundwater drought is more strongly correlated with hydrological drought than with meteorological drought. Also, Boeinzahra city has a higher hazard and Qazvin and Alborz has a lower hazard than other regions.