Journal of Arid Environments 165 (2019) 64–72

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Journal of Arid Environments

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Estimating groundwater recharge uncertainty for a carbonate aquifer in a T

semi-arid region using the Kessler's method
Nuno Barreiras∗, Luís Ribeiro
CERIS, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal

A R T I C LE I N FO

Keywords: Abstract: Groundwater recharge is an important hydrological parameter for the quantification of water budgets
Karst in order to better achieve a sustainable groundwater management. Such management is paramount in the
Semi-arid region southern region of Portugal because groundwater represents more than 75% of the public water supply, the
Groundwater recharge water demand for irrigated agriculture and tourism industries is rapidly growing, and the region is severely
Linear regression
threatened by droughts and extreme dryness. Nevertheless, the estimation of recharge to carbonate aquifers in
Variance
semi-arid regions remains challenging. Uncertainty analyses are still scarce and the natural variability of re-
charge is unknown in most cases. The present work aims at estimating the recharge rate in carbonate aquifers of
southern Portugal based on the Kessler method, identifying the confidence interval with known variability and
reduced uncertainty. The outcome is a cost-free graphical tool that calculates an annual recharge rate per year,
proving to be a reliable tool for annual recharge estimation and allowing to overcome the limitations of the
chronological variability and data acquisition associated with other current methods. Acknowledging the con-
fidence intervals of the annual recharge estimations can improve greatly the decision making process for the
regional sustainable groundwater resources management.

1. Introduction territory and producing local hydrological and hydrogeochemical re-

Under normal circumstances in temperate and semi-arid regions,
groundwater recharge occurs mostly in direct response to the infiltra-
tion of rainfall (Flint et al., 2004; Alcalá et al., 2011). The infiltrating
precipitation and surface water that enters an underlying phreatic
aquifer through the water table - sometimes after the infiltration event -
is called the aquifer recharge. The fraction of infiltration that remains is
transpired by plants, evaporated from the soil or returned to the surface
as interflow or shallow ephemeral perched aquifers discharge (Scanlon
et al., 2006; Custódio et al., 1997). The total recharge (RT), which is
referred to the water table aquifers, may be transferred vertically to
deeper aquifers through aquitards or by horizontal groundwater flow.
This recharge has to be separated from what is the net recharge, which
refers to what remains in the water table aquifer after discounting what
is used by phreatophytes (de Vries and Simmers, 2002). Net recharge is
then added to aquifer storage and moves toward the aquifer system
discharge points and areas. Groundwater recharge to shallow, un-
confined, fractured and carbonate aquifers in semi-arid/arid regions is
mainly a concentrated recharge (RC). This recharge occurs by rainfall
infiltration, from watercourses, near-surface bedrock fractures and
sinkholes (high bedrock permeability), affecting a small fraction of the
sponses in groundwater storage and quality (Flint et al., 2004; Alcalá
et al., 2011). When groundwater recharge occurs in porous media
through the rainfall infiltration then is called diffuse recharge (RD). This
type of mechanism gains importance to RT when it takes place on well-
developed soils in the plain regions with temperate to humid climates
(Keese et al., 2005; Maréchal et al., 2009; Healy, 2010).
In well-developed karstic systems the response of the precipitation
can be perceived in discharge points very rapidly, which is a clear in-
dication of karstic aquifers with conduit flow behavior (Kessler, 1965;
Andreo et al., 2008; Li et al., 2008). In this case, or in fissured and bare
bedrock areas in arid regions, RC represents a very significant fraction
of RT (Wood et al., 1997; Simmers et al., 1997).
Depending on variations in climate, lithology, soil type, fractura-
tion, vegetation and land use, slope, etc., most large semi-arid carbo-
nate regions and in particular in karstic aquifer systems located in a
temperate climate, conditions are established to the combined and
variable contribution to RT of both diffuse and concentrated recharge
mechanisms (Lerner et al., 1990; Wood et al., 1997; de Vries and
Simmers, 2002; Alcalá et al., 2011). Even if the quantification of re-
charge by each mechanism is still difficult to calculate separately and
accepting that RC is a very important fraction of RT, at these conditions

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: nuno.barreiras@tecnico.ulisboa.pt (N. Barreiras).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2019.04.005
Received 14 June 2018; Received in revised form 15 January 2019; Accepted 2 April 2019
Available online 10 April 2019
0140-1963/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
N. Barreiras and L. Ribeiro
karstic aquifer system and high bedrock permeability in a temperate
climate and semi-arid/arid region - it may be assumed that the con-
tribution of evapotranspiration and surface runoff to RT is negligible
(Custódio et al., 1997; Flint et al., 2004).
Some of the most important challenges in estimating groundwater
recharge in carbonate aquifer are the spatiotemporal variability of re-
charge, the assessment and regional hydrological consequences of lo-
calized and indirect recharge, the extrapolation of localized data to a
wider area, the determination of representative data (de Vries and
Simmers, 2002) and finally, the uncertainties associated to every
method (Scanlon et al., 2002; Flint et al., 2002). Additionally to these
methodological challenges, global climate models consistently predict
increases in drought and drier future soil conditions that raise concerns
regarding climate change throughout the Mediterranean regions, par-
ticularly in Portugal and Spain (Wang, 2005; Heinrich and Gobiet,
2011; Sheffield and Wood, 2008). In the case of Portugal, the southern
region is the most affected by droughts and extreme dryness, with clear
evidence of land degradation and soil erosion, with significant trends to
have extreme rainfall events in the winter months (Costa et al., 2008;
Durão et al., 2010; Costa and Soares, 2012). This situation leads to
significant water deficits with strong impacts on the environment,
agriculture, industry and drinking water supply, all greatly dependent
on groundwater (Cunha et al., 2006; Ribeiro and Cunha, 2010). From
the combination of these conditions, with increasing demand for the
quantification of water budgets in support of management decisions
comes an increased need for practical methods to quantify recharge
rates in semi-arid regions (Scanlon et al., 2002; Alcalá et al., 2011;
Andreu et al., 2011).
Recharge estimation methods focus on local rainfall events or on
measuring yield long-term areal values. Most studies are carried out at
the aquifer scale and the recharge rates are applied directly to the
outcrop area of the aquifer. According to the available data and con-
ceptual recharge model applied in each case study the most appropriate
method is selected in order to reduce the uncertainty (Martos-Rosillo
et al., 2015). The simultaneous applicability of several methods is not
always possible due the unavailability of hydrogeological data. Ac-
cording to Martos-Rosillo et al. (2015) when the time series of hydro-
geological data was scarce the recharge was assessed using aquifer
water budget in some aquifers, adequate for a delimited aquifer when
its saturated volume at the beginning and the end of the period is the
same. However, in many aquifers it is not possible to apply this method,
and in this case the soil water balance method is used mostly the times,
In fact, the soil water balance is the most widely used method to esti-
mate RT applied from arid to humid regions at different spatiotemporal
scales (Lerner et al., 1990; Simmers et al., 1997; Scanlon et al., 2002).
Nevertheless, the results from this method are usually associated to
high uncertainty and biased values when used in dry climates (Wood
et al., 1997; Keese et al., 2005; Alcalá et al., 2011). The chloride mass
balance (Eriksson and Khunakasem, 1969) has been used in previous
research to estimate the total recharge originating from both diffuse
and preferential flow components in continental Spain (Alcalá and
Custodio, 2014) and especially in carbonate aquifers of the Betic Cor-
dillera (Andreu et al., 2011; Alcalá et al., 2011; Martos-Rosillo et al.,
2013).
The inverse calibration in numerical modeling is commonly used to
predict recharge rates during calibration to heads and groundwater
flow rates (Scanlon et al., 2002). However, the lack of an accurate
spatial and hydraulic characterization of karstic channeling makes the
estimation of a precipitation-recharge relation really complex since the
channels supplying recharge to groundwater are rather isolated from
the evapotranspiration processes occurring in the surrounding matrix
(Weiss and Gvirtzman, 2007; Zhang, 2014). In semi-arid regions, the
water tables are usually deep and only long dry or wet periods will
affect the net value of RT.
Additionally, carbonate aquifers are likely to have turbulent flow
components meaning that numerical methods applied in the saturated
65
Journal of Arid Environments 165 (2019) 64–72
zone, such as those based on Darcy's Law, may be limited for estimating
short-term RT (Custódio et al., 1997; Simmers et al., 1997). One of the
most accepted approach to model karst groundwater flow is the triple
porosity approach (matrix, fracture and conduit), because storage is
often dominant in the rock matrix and the fissure system whereas flow
is achieved mainly through conduits. Palmer et al. (1999) expressed the
opinion that ‘the heterogeneity of karst aquifers is so severe that it is
virtually impossible to acquire sufficient information to construct a
predictive digital model trustworthy enough to allow extrapolation of
heads and flow conditions from known to unknown locations, let alone
into the future’. In Portugal, one of the major problems when a study on
the estimation of groundwater recharge in carbonate aquifer is carried
out is the lack of data series, in specific, data from spring discharges and
hydraulic heads. In most of the cases the carbonate aquifer discharges
are not monitored at all and, when they are, the data is available only
for a few years, presenting significant time gaps that considerably de-
crease the quality of the information. Thus, the piezometers installed on
the aquifers are in most cases insufficiently representative for the
characterization and comprehensive analysis of the systems (Nunes
et al., 2004; Nascimento et al., 2013), limiting the knowledge on the
evolution of the hydraulic heads and its spatial variability. Having this
into account, some methods for the estimation of recharge have been
used by several authors in order to encounter reliable results without
requiring great amounts of data. One of the most widely used empirical
method for the estimation of groundwater recharge in carbonate
aquifers in the semi-arid Mediterranean region is APLIS (Andreo et al.,
2008; Martos-Rosillo et al., 2015). This method estimate the mean re-
charge rate in carbonate aquifers, expressed as a percentage of pre-
cipitation, based on the variables altitude (A), slope (P), lithology (L),
infiltration landforms (I) and soil type (S). Still, these methods have to
be validated by other more formal methodologies to compare long-term
estimates (de Vries and Simmers, 2002; Scanlon et al., 2006). One of the
empirical methods used to study concentrated groundwater recharge in
carbonate aquifer in semi-arid and temperate regions is the Kessler's
method (Kessler, 1965). This method was first applied in karst aquifers
located in Hungary in order to calculate the potential recharge rate (Rc)
in carbonate rock via unsaturated zone. Since then it has been used
successfully in Mediterranean environments, showing good correlation
with values estimated by other mass balance calculations (Almeida,
1985; Silva, 1988; Andreo et al., 2008), and for our studied region,
previous works have shown a good adaptation to the particular climatic
conditions (Silva, 1988; Monteiro, 2001; Stigter et al., 2009). Some
research has been done very recently on the quantification of the un-
certainty of groundwater recharge estimated by other methods, namely
by water and energy balance model (Xiea et al., 2018) and by the use of
regression kriging and the chloride mass balance method (Crosbie et al.,
2018). However, no research has been published on the quantification
of uncertainty associated to the estimation of groundwater recharge
using Kessler's method. In order to improve the reliability of the Kes-
sler's method and its results when applied in the Mediterranean (semi-
arid regions) the objective of this work was to identify a confidence
interval of estimation, with known variability and uncertainty. This
interval could then be used to indicate the reliability of the estimated
value, applicable to water resources management. Hence, it becomes
possible to provide a simple but consistent estimation of present and
future annual groundwater recharge.
2. Methodology
Some assumptions have to be made in order to apply Kessler's
method for the estimation of aquifer recharge and consequent estima-
tion of uncertainty. The study case has to be located in a warm
Mediterranean-climate region presenting semi-arid characteristics and
in carbonate aquifers with well-developed karstic conditions. The
Kessler's method (Kessler, 1965) establishes a relation between the
precipitation of the first four months of the year (January to April) and
N. Barreiras and L. Ribeiro
Table 1
Relation of corrective precipitation rate, μ, and constant
corrective value, k (Kessler, 1965).
Corrective precipitation
rate, μ (%) Constant value, k
0–5 0
6–15 1 With the purpose of studying the statistical relationship between 1)
16–25 2 the recharge values calculated by Kessler's method and 2) the temporal
26–35 3 distribution of precipitation, Pearson's correlation coefficients were
36–45 4
46–55 5
56–60 7 verification that there is no other important variable disregarded, like
61–65 10
66–70 13
> 70 15
the precipitation of the total year expressed in percentage and called
determinative precipitation rate (DPR). This rate must be corrected by a
constant value (k) that can be obtained by determining the rate of the
difference between the precipitation on the last four months (Sep-
tember to December) of the year and the long-term average precipita-
tion of the same four months. To do so, the corrective precipitation rate
(μ) has to be determined by the equation (1).
PSep − Dec − P¯Sep − Dec
μ=
P¯Sep − Dec
Where.
PSep − Dec is the precipitation of the last four months of the year.
P̄Sep − Dec is the average precipitation for the last four months of the
year, calculated for a long time series.
The value of the correcting constant k is added or subtracted from
the determinative precipitation rate according on the sign of the differ-
ence (PSep − Dec − P̄Sep − Dec ). The relation of the corrective precipitation rate
(μ) to the correcting constant k is shown in Table 1.
The attribution of a sign to k is basically the reflection of the level of
saturation of the capillary system, depending on the precipitation
conditions of autumn, regulating a posteriori a larger or smaller in-
filtration in winter months, accordingly to the amount of precipitation.
Finally, the infiltration rate (or the concentrated recharge, RC) for a
given year can be determined using the corrected determinative pre-
cipitation rate (DPRc). The corresponding infiltration rate can be read off
from the curve shown in Fig. 1 that was plotted by Kessler (1965). The
collected data includes the precipitation on the region and the yield of
the main water springs. Therefore, in the x-axis is the DPRc (%) on the
basis of precipitation, and in the y-axis is the infiltration rate de-
termined based on the measured yields of the spring, from now con-
sidered to be the recharge rate. From the pairs of points obtained, a
graph was drawn, resulting in the so called curve of infiltration, in this
Fig. 1. Curve of the corrected determinative precipitation rate (%, x-axis) and
infiltration rate (%, y-axis) drawn based on nearly thirty years empirical data
(adapted from Kessler, 1965).
Journal of Arid Environments 165 (2019) 64–72
case a polynomial function of degree 5, from which is possible to di-
rectly read off the recharge rate from an interval of known conditions of
precipitation (Fig. 1). From the latter curve is then possible to measure
a recharge rate for each year, since the precipitation conditions are
known as required in the equation (1) and, consequently, large amounts
of precipitation data can also be presented as an average rate of re-
charge.
obtained and evaluated. This correlation analysis also contributes to the
an extreme annual average variation in precipitation conditions. The
required data are the recharge values calculated by Kessler to a 30 year
series and the monthly precipitation values of the same time series.
Then, for each year, a table was made with the sum of different se-
quential monthly precipitation values. For example, to obtain the cor-
relation coefficient between the recharge and the precipitation of
January and February, a table was built with the amount of precipita-
tion of those months for every year of the recharge series. Therefore, for
the entire recharge series a table was used with the precipitation of all
the sequential combinations from 2 months to 8 months, making up a
matrix of 30 × 84 cells. For each month sequence (84) a correlation
coefficient was obtained for the series of recharge (30 years). The
correlation coefficient between these two tested variables had to in-
dicate a strong correlation, presumed to be higher than 70%. When this
(1)
happened, the recharge was considered dependent from the precipita-
tion sums of the evaluated months. Thus, if the recharge rate calculated
by Kessler's method, RKc, is strongly dependent on the precipitation Pc,
defined in the equation (2) and according to Draper and Smith (1998), a
linear regression can be made with an independent observable variable
(in this case the precipitation) and one other dependent calculated
variable (recharge rate). Therefore, the abscissa is composed by:
Pc = (PJan − Apr )c + (PSep − Dec )c − 1 (2)
Where:
(PJan − Apr ) is the sum of precipitation between January and April;
(PSep − Dec ) is the sum of precipitation between September and
December;
c is the year of the considered recharge value.
And being the ordinate.
RKc , value of recharge calculated by the Kessler method for each
year c.
Thus, the equation (3) originates from the linear regression that
defines the relationship between the variables Pc and RKc. This equation
allows for directly estimating a recharge value Rc, without the necessity
of running Kessler's method again, with a non-quantified uncertainty, to
any known conditions of precipitation Pc. The coefficients a and b were
withdrawn from the equation (3) to be applied, later on, in equation
(5).
R c = a + bPc (3)
Before quantifying the uncertainty of the estimated recharge values
Rc, the statistical distribution of the data series of precipitation Pc was
assessed. The lognormal distribution of the variables is assumed to be
appropriate as the precipitation months considered to the linear re-
gression, (Pc)i, are relative to months with intense rain rates (Hosking
and Stow, 1987; Cho et al., 2004; Mahajan et al., 2005; Liu et al., 2011).
Under these conditions, the rainfall period is comparable to storm
rainfall that tends to follow a lognormal distribution (Kedem and Chiu,
1987). If the original data is lognormal then its logarithm ln(Pc)i is
normally distributed. To empirically assess the goodness-of-fit (GoF) of
this assumption, an analysis on some properties of the Normal Dis-
tribution through the descriptive statistics of the log-transformed data
was performed. This included verifying the convergence of mean and
median values, the verification of a symmetric distribution about the
66
N. Barreiras and L. Ribeiro
mean and the observation of plots of the probability and ln(Pc)i scores
close to linear. In addition, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test was
applied to prove the lognormality assumption. Therefore, equation (4)
was applied for a data series of precipitation (Pc)i, where (i = 1, …,n)
and n the number of years with measured precipitation so as to calcu-
late the uncertainty of the estimated recharge values (Rc)i.
This means that, not only other recharge values are given by means
of the regression of equation (3) but as well as the uncertainty, esti-
mated to be the variance of the regression (equation (4)):
2
⎧ 1 [ln(Pc ) j − ln(Pc )] ⎫ ment, some sinkholes and subterranean cavities. The first estimates of
σ j2 = σ 2 1 + + n 2
, j = 1, ..., n
⎨ n ∑ [ln(Pc )i − ln(Pc )] ⎬ (4)
⎩ i=1 ⎭
Being:
n is the number of observed data;
σ2 is the variance of estimation, calculated in the following equa-
tion,
1
n precipitation that corresponds to recharge was calculated based on the
σ2 =
n−2
∑ [ln(Rk )i − a ln(Pc )i − b]2
i=1 (5)
and
n which translates in an estimated renewable resource of between 16 and
1 24 hm3/year.. These values do not take into consideration the effect of
P =
n
∑ ln(Pc )i
j=1 (6)
Finally, the confidence intervals (CI) of the estimated recharge Rc
values with 95% probability were also calculated assuming the
Gaussian hypothesis, through the following expression for the lower
and upper endpoint:
σj
CI = (Rc ) j ± 1.96 ⎛ ⎞
⎝ n⎠ (7)
Being σj the standard deviation for the estimated recharge values Rc,
based on equation (4), and n the number of years with measured pre-
cipitation.
This way through the presented empirical method, it is possible to
estimate an annual recharge value under known precipitation condi-
tions in a carbonate aquifer with quantified uncertainty.
3. Data set
The aquifer where this methodology was applied is the aquifer
system of Almádena-Odeáxere (hereafter known as the AO), mainly
composed by karstified carbonate rock formations and situated in the
southernmost region of Portugal. The precipitation is the main source of
recharge for the AO aquifer system and its distribution is characterized
by high inter-annual variability (Mourato et al., 2010), but frequently
affected by heavy precipitation events (Costa et al., 2008; Fragoso and
Gomes, 2008).
3.1. Case study
The aquifer system of AO is located in the hydrogeological unit of
the Orla Meridional (southernmost region of Portugal), in Algarve re-
gion (Fig. 2), and extends over a surface area of 63.5 km2. The aquifer is
developed in the carbonate rocks of Lower and Middle Jurassic and the
dominant lithologies are limestone, dolomitic limestone and dolomite,
with a thickness between 60 m and 100 m (Rocha et al., 1983), which
appear to be a well developed karst in some places (Hugman, 2009).
The aquifer system is referred as a free-to-confined karstic system
(Almeida et al., 2000). In some places these formations are covered by
Faro-Quarteira sands and gravels, as well as alluvial deposits associated
with the Almádena and Bensafrim streams. The distribution of these
lithologies, as well as the geographic boundaries of the AO can be seen
in the Fig. 2. The aquifer formations are set in a synclinal structure,
with a NE-SW direction, compressed between the Barão de S. João fault
67
Journal of Arid Environments 165 (2019) 64–72
to the northwest, and the Espiche fault to the southeast (Reis, 1993).
The recharge is made both by the infiltration from the Bensafrim
and Odeáxere streams and by concentrated recharge from precipitation
on the rock outcrops. The Bensafrim stream works both as influent and
effluent, both for NE and SW. In the vicinity of the contact with the
Hettangian (Lower Jurassic), the flow decreases, and can be null in
some dry seasons, which is an indication of the infiltration in the car-
bonate formations (Almeida et al., 2000). The stream reappears only in
the Portelas area, at south. The recharge by direct infiltration into the
formations is facilitated by natural karst landforms as limestone pave-
recharge in the aquifer system of AO area were presented by Reis
(1993). In this research, the author evaluated areas where carbonate
rocks are covered by sedimentary deposits, with an estimated recharge
between 28.9% and 35.6% of the precipitation from 1955 to 1985
based on calculations of evapotranspiration and varying field capacity
values. In areas with outcrops of carbonated rock, the percentage of
Kessler's method for values from the Lagos station between 1960 and
1985, and range from 44.4% to 83.4%. Almeida et al. (2000) estimated
the recharge rate between 40 and 60% of the yearly precipitation,
indirect infiltration from the aforementioned streams, which may in-
clude a significant amount of runoff generated upstream from the
aquifer area. Vieira and Monteiro (2003) used a finite element network
classification based on a weighted precipitation, taking into account the
presence of sub-areas in which the recharge rates vary between 5% and
50% depending on the lithology which outcrops in that sub-area. The
infiltration capacity of the field validated the interval of recharge values
(Monteiro et al., 2003). Although it is known that the discharge of the
aquifer - of the diffuse or occult type - is made in the west limit and is
located in the zone of Boca do Rio (Vieira and Monteiro, 2003), the
discharge rates are unknown.
The piezometric data indicate a divergent flow, predominantly in
the east and southwest, in the west bank of the Bensafrim stream. Reis
(1993) notes that is very likely to exist a fault in the area of Ferrel-
Espiche that would result in a groundwater division. This way, the in-
filtrated water in the northeast bank of the stream discharges in Por-
telas which is the main drainage system. These springs dried up while
the boreholes in the area were extracting for public supply to the city of
Lagos, however since they were deactivated in the year of 2000 the
springs have become active once more (Reis, 2007). On the other hand,
the infiltrated water in the southwest bank is discharging in Almádena.
It is of note that the discharge in Almádena is diffuse or occult, and that
the aquifer presents a high regulatory capacity, with inter-annual
fluctuations of piezometry of less than 3 m (Almeida et al., 2000).
3.2. Precipitation data
The first step to apply the methodology proposed was the climate
data processing from APA (Portuguese Environmental Agency). The con-
sidered APA meteorological stations are available in the public web-
platform SNIRH (Sistema Nacional de Informação de Recursos Hídricos –
Portuguese Water Resources Information System) which, among others,
include data such as daily, monthly and annual precipitation. The
majority of the APA stations contain large series of data, ranging several
decades of measured daily precipitation with some estimated values
that fill the gaps. For the present study, a minimum range of 30 years of
measured daily precipitation was considered to calculate monthly
precipitation. The stations used for the case of Almádena-Odeáxere
were the 31E/02UG (Bensafrim) and 31E/01UC (Lagos) (Fig. 2), for the
period between January of 1972 and December of 2001. The stations
were selected considering data availability and the proximity to the
aquifer area. One of the reasons to adopt such old precipitation data is
related to the confidence of the data after 2001. After July 2001 SNIRH
N. Barreiras and L. Ribeiro
Fig. 2. Location, lithological setting and geographical boundaries of the Almádena-Odeáxere aquifer in southern Portugal (Source: Almeida et al., 2000). Location of
the meteorological stations with 30 years series of precipitation data.
only makes available calculated precipitation data which is not the
observed precipitation. Adding to this, the time series of 30 years be-
tween 1972 and 2001 is also considered to be the most complete, with
very few gaps, and with very few calculated values. Furthermore, the
adopted time series of 30 years is considered to represent the pre-
cipitation patterns and ranges of that region, including not only years of
abnormal values (for example 1200 mm/year in 1989) for a semi-arid
region, as well as data from years of drought (1981–1983). As one of
the objectives of this paper is to present a tool to quantify uncertainty
associated to the estimation of groundwater recharge within a known
range of precipitation and consequently an equation to estimate the
recharge and its confidence intervals at a given aquifer, not much im-
portance was given to the age of the data, but to the range of pre-
cipitation data.
In order to achieve a single value of precipitation to every month of
the considered period and each case-study, the influence of each station
to the aquifer area was weighted by the Thiessen polygon method. The
30 years series of weighted monthly precipitation resulting from that
operation are represented in the Fig. 3. In Fig. 4 are displayed the area-
weighted values of the average monthly precipitation (mm) for the
aquifer system.
3.3. Hydrogeological data
Despite the fact that available hydrogeological data for the valida-
tion of the method is scarce the SNIRH provided important information
for the present work such as piezometric series. Almádena-Odeáxere
68
Journal of Arid Environments 165 (2019) 64–72
has a piezometric series between 1-1994 and 12–2001. The used ob-
servation points are the 602/76 and the 602/311 that are shown in the
Fig. 6. These data were utilized on the validation of Kessler's method for
the calculation of recharge. Regarding data on spring discharges, there
are no data for spring discharges within the timeframe 1971–2001 to
match the same period of recharge estimation. The only available data
for flow rates measured at two springs is from 2005 to 2006 and the
measured daily flow rate ranges between null in dry seasons to less than
8000 m3/day in wet seasons.
4. Results and discussion
The annual values of recharge of each year from the considered
series of precipitation are presented in Fig. 5. In the Y-axis are the
annual recharge values provided by the transformation of the annual
infiltration rate given by the Kessler method. To verify and validate the
reliability of the results found, the correspondent calculated annual
recharge values were plotted together with the series of hydraulic heads
from Almádena-Odeáxere (Fig. 6).
The recharge values on the graphic are located on the months be-
tween October–December and January–April of the next year in order
to give a better idea of the effect of recharge on the hydraulic heads.
The piezometry moderately confirmed the calculated recharge values
and the moving average for 12 months provided information about the
trend that a simple average of the series would mask. In fact, high or
low recharge rates will not necessarily mean a very significant change
in the piezometry (inter-annual variability of a few meters). This
N. Barreiras and L. Ribeiro
Fig. 3. Weighted monthly precipitation rate (mm/month).
Fig. 4. Average monthly precipitation (mm) diagram based on series of 30
years.
Fig. 5. Values of annual recharge to each year of the precipitation series, cal-
culated by the Kessler method.
behavior could be a result of a high regulating capacity of the aquifer
system, as well as being due to the well-developed karst network of the
aquifer system which allows for good hydraulic connections between all
of the aquifers sectors and the natural discharge areas (Almeida et al.,
2000; Hugman, 2009), The periods of higher recharge values
(> 200 mm/year) are proceeded by higher hydraulic heads (an in-
crease of up to m in the hydraulic heads), but the observation of such
effect needs a delay of a few months. A comparison with other pub-
lished values obtained by other methods was also made. The conversion
to an average recharge value serves merely as an indicative value to
69
Journal of Arid Environments 165 (2019) 64–72
allow an easier comparison with other published fixed values. For the
case of the AO aquifer system, the infiltration rate range from 36.3 to
69.1% of the average annual precipitation and an average infiltration
rate of about 54.7% was found from the average annual precipitation of
525 mm/year, which is transformed into an average annual recharge
rate of 289 mm/year. Reis (1993) presented a range between 44.4%
and 83.4% of precipitation and Almeida et al. (2000) indicated a value
between 40% and 60% of precipitation based on the water balance
equation. Vieira and Monteiro (2003) presented a range between 5%
and 50% through the development of an integrated methodology of a
geographic information system and a finite element network to calcu-
late the recharge. Therefore, it can be stated that the value presented
here is within the interval indicated by Reis (1993) and Almeida et al.
(2000) though it is quite different from Vieira and Monteiro (2003)
study. According to Vieira and Monteiro (2003), the recharge value is
conditioned by the characteristics of the outcropped materials and by
the conceptual model of the aquifer system, that considers a non-uni-
form precipitation. Further research would be necessary to explain the
difference between the presented results and the values in Vieira and
Monteiro (2003), in order to refine the interval of percentage applicable
to the aquifer.
The Kessler's method does not take into account the geologic and
hydrogeologic characteristics of a karst aquifer that here might be
pertinent to investigate it in a following work. There is no doubt that for
the case of carbonate aquifers, the integration of information of alti-
tude, infiltration zones, fracturation, soil types, land-use or slope are an
important part for the understanding of the infiltration process.
Therefore, further studies must be developed in order to ascertain the
relation between those parameters, the precipitation and the recharge
rate in carbonate aquifers. Generally, the achieved results by the
Kessler's method are quite close to the aforementioned published rates.
The Pearson's correlation coefficients for the dependency of the
recharge values on the distribution of precipitation showed that better
correlations are observed in the first and last 4 months of the year, as it
would be expected due to the greater contribution of precipitation on
those months. More specifically, the interval that presented the best
correlation was the period of the first 4 months of the year (Jan.–Apr.),
ranging correlations between 60 and 80%.
Before applying equation (4) to estimate the recharge for known
values of precipitation and assuming a lognormal distribution, an
analysis of the descriptive statistics of log-transformed precipitation
(Pc) and the Goodness-of-Fit test were performed. The statistics of the
30 year series of lognormalized precipitation Pc, for the case-study and
the study of the correspondent histograms suggested a symmetric dis-
tribution around the mean for the log-transformed precipitation Pc. In
Fig. 7 are plotted the Probability-Probability graphics for the log-
transformed precipitation Pc, where is shown an empirical cumulative
distribution and a theoretical cumulative distribution close to a linear
N. Barreiras and L. Ribeiro Journal of Arid Environments 165 (2019) 64–72

Fig. 6. Comparison between the annual recharge and the hydraulic heads in two piezometers located on the Almádena-Odeáxere aquifer.

Fig. 7. Probability-Probability plots of the log-normalized precipitation data,

Pc, of 30 years.

relation.
Regarding the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (K-S), the analysis showed
significant results at α = 0.05 level of significance with K-S = 0.126 to
Almádena-Odeáxere, indicating a good fit to the precipitation of the
considered months on equation (2).
Consequently, the arguments based on the statistical analysis re-
spect the conventions of the normal distribution properties. However, Fig. 8. On the upper graphic is the linear regression of the scattergram of Rc and
because the data used was log-normalized the analysis supports the Pc for the aquifer system, with the 95% confidence interval represented by the
trend of a lognormal distribution. coloured lines (green line = upper endpoint, red line = lower endpoint) for a
This way, equation (4) could be applied and the variance of the precipitation series of 30 years and, on the bottom graphic the annual recharge
for the corresponding timeframe. (For interpretation of the references to colour
regression calculated for AO. Based on this, the confidence intervals of
in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
the estimated recharge values with 95% probability were also calcu-
lated and plotted in a graph, together with the correspondent linear
regression of Rc and Pc for the series of 30 years studied (Fig. 8). The legend, at the right side is also possible to verify the linear regression
upper line corresponds to all the upper endpoints of each pair of points equation used for AO and some descriptive statistics of the precipitation
(Pc, Rc), and the lower line matches all the lower endpoints. In the data. Within these statistics are shown the minimum and the maximum

70
N. Barreiras and L. Ribeiro
values for the case study, defining the interval of known conditions of
precipitation to which is possible to apply the equation for recharge
estimation. Every precipitation rate out of that interval should not be
applicable with this linear regression equation as well as its uncertainty.
Another aspect to take into account is the proximity of the upper and
lower endpoints to the linear regression trend line. The more distant the
endpoints are from the regression, the wider are the confidence inter-
vals, leading to higher levels of uncertainty. However, if the annual
precipitation Pc is known and within the intervals of the regression,
then the annual recharge value can be directly measured just by reading
the recharge on the graph. In the case of AO, for every precipitation
value between 175 and 1192 mm/year the recharge is between ∼110
and ∼730 mm/year. In this way, the method does not give a single
average annual recharge rate for an aquifer but an estimation of re-
charge values to every calendar year with the respective confidence
interval. The resulting values also allow plotting the annual recharge
corresponding to every year of the precipitation series and observe the
upper and lower endpoints of the confidence interval (Fig. 8).
Another aspect to consider on the validation of the method is to
verify if the calculated recharge values through the recharge rates ob-
tained by other methods fits within the confidence intervals for the
same periods of precipitation herein studied. In the case of AO the
application of recharge rates between 40% and 60% (Almeida et al.,
2000; Vieira and Monteiro, 2003) led to good results with the interval
50% and 55%. An explanation for this could be the fact that the con-
fidence interval is quite short in this case-study. This makes the results
derived from other recharge rates easily out from that interval. On the
other hand, that can also say that the recharge rates between 50% and
55% may be more approximated to the real recharge rates.
In some cases, important methods like Hargreaves, Thornthwaite
and Turc methods, that support the estimation of the groundwater re-
charge cannot be applied in carbonate aquifers because the evapo-
transpiration for semi-arid regions, mostly the times is not a relevant
variable. So the present methodology can be considered a good alter-
native allowing a fast and reliable estimation. These estimates show
that water management should consider the high climate variability of
the region, with a quantified uncertainty and confidence intervals for
known precipitation values, and not be based merely on values of
average yearly budgets as has been the case for most management
practices of groundwater resources. The comparison of the evolution of
spring yields of the studied aquifer in order to further validate the
annual recharge values could also be interesting. However, the avail-
able data for that location is quite irregular and it would involve several
unproved assumptions such as the delay times of groundwater, from
infiltration zone to water table and/or springs. Future work must con-
sider also other factors to the formulation of the annual recharge in
carbonate aquifer such as the altitude, infiltration zones, rock fractures,
soil types, land-use or slope that might be important in the refining of
this methodology.
5. Conclusions
In the present work, it was introduced a methodology based in the
Kessler method in order to calculate the recharge rates of carbonate
aquifers in semi-arid regions with temperate to humid climate and
evaluate its uncertainty. This methodology went further than existing
ones by attempting to establish a relation between the most important
precipitation months of the Kessler method and the recharge values.
This relation was achieved through a linear regression analysis that not
only could estimate recharge values for an interval of precipitation
values but also allowed estimating the 95% confidence intervals, as-
suming a lognormal distribution. The only required data to apply this
methodology was the recharge area of the aquifer, a large data series of
precipitation (preferably at least 30 year series) and the location of the
stations. The linear regression applied to the aquifer serves as a gra-
phical tool to directly estimate and forecast the annual recharge value
71
Journal of Arid Environments 165 (2019) 64–72
given a known precipitation rate, important for example for the water
resources management. If the equation of the linear regression is built
up to the latest year information, then it can be simply updated every
year as new precipitation data is acquired. To do so, it is just needed to
add the new data of average monthly precipitation to the previous data
series and an eventual new equation will result (depending whether
there is new unknown precipitation values, e.g., new minimum average
monthly precipitation values). With the simplifications associated to
the method the results were quite positive for the case of Almádena-
Odeáxere aquifer system, partly reflected by the hydrogeological data
and for its similarity with other authors' works. Therefore, it is con-
cluded that the equation can be applied in cases with similar natural
conditions (Mediterranean climate) and eventually in many other car-
bonate aquifers within different precipitation patterns (requiring the
adjustment of the Kessler's method to the precipitation pattern) taking
into account the validation of results by other classic methods.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to João Nascimento and Ana Silva from CERIS-IST/
UL, and the reviewers of this paper for the thorough reviews of our
work which has improved it greatly.
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