Groundwater constitutes the largest single source of fresh water in many parts of the world and provides a risk buffer to sustain critical water demands during cyclic and prolonged dry periods, especially in semi-arid and arid regions. However, unprecedented socio-economical growths are...

The European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) requires EU countries to achieve good status of all their waters by 2015. This should be achieved through the implementation of river basin management plans (RBMPs), which in turn are based on water resources baseline data. While it is too...