Groundwater level seasonal behavior and trends in wells across the northern Italian Plains

This dataset contains the seasonality and trends of groundwater level anomalies for 1024 groundwater wells across the northern Italian Plains with observations collected over the period from 2002-2022. The aquifer in this region is a multi-layered sedimentary aquifer consisting of a thick unconfined aquifer near the base of the Alps, transitioning to a confined aquifer system towards the center of the Plain.

Three files are contained in this dataset:

(1)     GroundwaterStationsPo.txt reports metadata about each groundwater well including the station name, coordinates (latitude, longitude), and whether it has been identified as being screened in a confined or unconfined aquifer layer.

(2)     GroundwaterPoDataset1.txt: Monthly seasonal mean groundwater level anomaly in meters. Averages calculated only for months with more than two observations across the entire timeseries. 

(3)     GroundwaterPoDataset2.txt: Groundwater level rate over dry and wet epochs in meters per year. Trends are calculated only if the timeseries contains more than 4 observations over the selected time period and observations cover at least 50% of the selected time period. This file contains trends over the following periods:

dry1: 11/2002-9/2007

wet1: 9/2007-3/2009

dry2: 3/2009-4/2012

wet2: 4/2012-4/2014

dry3: 4/2014-9/2022

The groundwater level observations are originally obtained from:

(1)     Agenzia Regionale per la Protezione dell’Ambiente (ARPA) Lombardia

(2)     L’Agenzia regionale per la prevenzione, l’ambiente e l’energia dell’Emilia-Romagna (ARPAE)

(3)     Agenzia Regionale per la Prevenzione e Protezione Ambientale del Veneto (ARPAV)

(4)     Agenzia Regionale per la Protezione Ambientale (ARPA) Piemonte