Groundwater reserves in a mountainous headwater catchment Insights from geophysics performed on the Strengbach Critical Zone Observatory
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Introduction Modelling the hydrological processes in mountainous areas is particularly challenging due to the strong heterogeneity of the underground medium in terms of hydrological properties, and the lack of groundwater observations. Here, we show how geophysical observations provide key information on the geometry of hydrofacies, the estimate of hydrological properties and the monitoring of the groundwater to study the critical zone in the Strengbach mountainous headwater catchment. Studied Site The OHGE (Observatoire Hydrogéochimique de l’Environnement) is a headwater catchment of 0.8 km² that lies on a granitic bedrock (Pierret et al. 2018). This observatory corresponds to the Strengbach catchment and is part of OZCAR, the French network of critical zone observatories. The OHGE is located in the Vosges mountains (northeastern France) with altitudes varying between 880 m and 1150 m (Fig. 1). The catchment topography shows steep slopes of 15° in average that reach up to 30° locally. Learning from scattered geophysical data Meteorological and hydrological data are monitored since 1986 and six boreholes provide the distribution of geological facies at depths of 50 to 120 m (Chabaux et al. 2023). In addition, electrical resistivity and seismic refraction tomographies were acquired to estimate variations in soil and saprolite thickness. These data show soil thickness varying from 50 cm to 5 m, and saprolite thickness ranging from 1 to 16 m (Lesparre et al. 2024). The electrical resistivity tomographies also underline the spatial distribution of the geological facies, as one slope of the catchment shows significantly higher resistivity values than the other (Lajaunie et al. 2024). Despite the relatively thin saprolite, magnetic resonance soundings detected groundwater above the noise level, and revealed a region with higher water content (Lesparre et al. 2020). Gravity data acquired across the whole catchment shows that the method has the sensitivity to distinguish areas with distinct water storage dynamics (Chaffaut et al. 2022). In particular, a region upstream the Strengbach stream exhibits the highest values of water content and the largest variations in water storage. We are using the geophysical data to develop a catchment-scale hydrogeophysical inversion. Hydrofacies geometries will be derived from the tomographies, and local hydrogeophysical experiments will be interpreted together with direct observations to estimate the range of hydrological properties. That information will serve as prior information of the inverse problem that will assimilate magnetic resonance and gravity data to complete piezometer and flow rate data.
Source: ARPHA Conference Abstracts
Institutions: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ecole Nationale du Génie de l'Eau et de l'Environnement de Strasbourg (ENGEES), Institut Terre & Environnement de Strasbourg, École & Observatoire des Sciences de la Terre, Université de Strasbourg, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Sorbonne Université, Milieux environnementaux, transferts et interactions dans les hydrosystèmes et les sols, Observatoire des sciences de l'Univers Paris-Centre Ecce Terra, Université de Montpellier, Géosciences Montpellier
Language: English
Subfield: Geophysics
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4410826853