Evidence for change in the nature of groundwater drought in the UK since 1890

Groundwater is an important source of water for public supply,
agricultural irrigation, and industry, as well as sustaining ecological
flows to
rivers, and it can be affected by
drought.
Groundwater droughts
are characterised by lowered groundwater levels, reduced yields from
boreholes, reduced
baseflow
and shortening of ephemeral streams.
Episodes of historic drought are commonly used to benchmark and/or
model future groundwater
resources
and for water resource
management
and drought planning
purposes. Consequently, in
order to
prepare more effectively for future groundwater droughts, there is a
need to better understand
groundwater
droughts from the recent past
and to identify if and how
features of groundwater droughts may
have
changed with
time. Here we present the results of a preliminary analysis
of the
Standardised Groundwater level Index (SGI) for the UKs two
longest groundwater
level time series from Chilgrove
House, Sussex,
and Dalton Holme, Yorkshire (top right), to investigate if and how
groundwater droughts have changed since the 1890s.