Contribution of local factors to the status of a groundwater dependent terrestrial ecosystem in the transboundary Gauja-Koiva River basin, North-Eastern Europe
Abstract A pilot study was carried out in the Matsi spring fen, southern Estonia to test a proposed methodology ( Terasmaa et al., 2020 ) for identifying potential effects of groundwater bodies on groundwater dependent terrestrial ecosystems (GDTE). A comprehensive hydrochemical and isotopic dataset was collected and analyzed using multivariate statistical methods to assess the origin of the groundwater discharging in the spring fen and to determine both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of GDTE-groundwater interdependence. The hydrochemical findings were complemented with the hydrogeological, hydrodynamical and botanical observations, and summarized into a conceptual model of the st…
A δ18O isoscape for the shallow groundwater in the Baltic Artesian Basin
The study presents a shallow groundwater isoscape for the Baltic region, which covers the major part of the Baltic Artesian Basin (BAB). BAB is an important palaeogroundwater reservoir, but prior to this study, little has been known about the spatial variability of δD and δ18O values in modern precipitation input across the region. To overcome this limitation, we hypothesized that the isotopic composition of shallow groundwater in the BAB could be used as a proxy for the mean weighted annual isotopic composition of local precipitation. However, the results of the study reveal many clear discrepancies between the isotopic composition of precipitation and shallow groundwater in the area. The …