Recharge and Evapotranspiration Characterizations through Holistic Assessment for Responsible Groundwater managEment

Mediterranean “analogue” environments across the world have seen increased frequencies of droughts, with repercussions such as reduced availability of soil water for the vegetation. This situation forces plants to shift from soil water to groundwater for photosynthesis.

Climatic adaptation plans have shown that sustainable management of groundwater resources cannot ignore areas with vegetation groundwater uptake and needs to account for the quantification of recharge to the groundwater and evapotranspiration, which are linked through processes happening in the critical zone.Dr Simone Gelsinari was inspired by the approach adopted for managing water resources by Australian regulatory agencies and formulated the project “Recharge and Evapotranspiration Characterizations through Holistic Assessment for Responsible Groundwater manaEment – RECHARGE”, with a core field observational part to be performed at the University of Florence and a secondment at the CNR for the modeling component and the possibility to interact with policymakers.

RECHARGE will promote the recognition of vegetation adaptation characteristics to non-stationary climates and the need for regulators to account for these characteristics in climate adaptation plans.RECHARGE will be the continuation of the Fellow’s interdisciplinary background given the mixed experience in modelling and field data instrumentation and collection that he maturated in the last 6-years spent in a semi-arid Mediterranean environment since both PhD and Postdoc were based in Mediterranean-like climatic areas in Australia.

RECHARGE will be the opportunity to bring back and apply to the EU his experience developed through extensive exposure to Australian climate adaptation approaches.

The Fellow’s goal is to be positioned at the interface of the field and modelling communities, within the broad area of hydrology and climate sciences, and he maximizes both experiences at the host and secondment institutions to reach this goal.