Assessing groundwaters – Quantitative and qualitative State of Play from the Adour-Garonne basin.
Supervisor: Martine Trochu (ANTEA, Labege)
Groundwater is an invisible, unevenly distributed and accessible resource which is essential to alimentation in drinking water, agriculture, sanitation, the industry and more. However, climate change and its consequences coupled with anthropogenic activities pose a threat to groundwaters with the rise in temperature and decrease in recharge during summer period, use of polluting substances, as well as repeated abstraction. The monitoring of groundwaters is ensured at the European scale in compliance with the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and calls for the establishment and frequent updating of a qualitative and quantitative assessment or State of Play (SoP) in each national hydrographic basin. This study focuses on the 2025 SoP of groundwater bodies in the Adour-Garonne basin, commissioned by the French ministry of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion. It presents the functioning of this wide-extent project, and temporary results obtained for groundwater masses in the basin, by performing two tests of the quantitative status assessment and computing one pressure: the “Associated Terrestrial Ecosystems” (ATE), “Saline Intrusion” Tests and “Industrial” Pressure. Finally, the qualitative state, only partly provided, provides first results submitted for expertise and feedback on the progression of methods, essential for continuous improvement of the monitoring of waters in a context of climate change.