Global change impacts on groundwater in Southern Germany-Part 1: Natural aspects

In order to account for complex interactions between humans climate and the water cycle, the research consortium GLOWA-Danube (www. glowa-danube. de) has developed the simulation system DANUBIA which consists of 17 coupled models. DANUBIA was applied to investigate various impacts of global-change between 2011 and 2060 in the Upper Danube Catchment. This article represents part 1 of an article series and describes groundwater and natural aspects of the investigations, while part 2 describes socio-economic aspects (Barthel et al. in Grundwaser 16(4), doi:10. 1007/s00767-011-0180-y, 2011). Here we describe concepts of GLOWA-Danube and DANUBIA as well as groundwater-related model components. This leads to selected simulation results for water balance, groundwater quantity and quality. The chosen scenarios show decreasing precipitation, increasing temperatures, and changes in the annual distribution that lead to significant decreases in groundwater recharge. Regional predictions of groundwater quality were difficult to achieve because of complex soil and groundwater processes. However, climatic change will probably have little impact. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.