Towards a sustainable and resilient water supply in Sweden: Holistic solutions to groundwater drought and water scarcity

Research Project, 2024 – 2026

Groundwater, the “invisible resource”, provides drinking water to 80% of Swedish municipalities and is tapped by ~600000 private wells for domestic, industrial, and agricultural use. Recently, Sweden has experienced increasingly frequent and persistent low groundwater levels and the situation is expected to worsen in a warmer climate, which poses significant challenges for water management. Our goal is to develop more realistic, more reliable, and more useful predictions of climate impacts on groundwater, thus enabling long-term sustainable management of water resources and creating resilient water supply systems. We will investigate groundwater drought and associated water scarcity across various spatial and temporal scales, examining different components of the hydrological cycle and their effects on humans and nature. Integrating time-series analysis, multivariate analysis, machine learning, along with interviews and surveys among stakeholders, we study drought propagation from the atmosphere to the groundwater system to identify its connection to society and ecosystems. The novelty lies in the holistic approach, crossing disciplinary boundaries to provide a comprehensive understanding of drought from its inception to its impacts. The expected outcome of this project is a comprehensive method for assessing and predicting groundwater-related water scarcity in Sweden, adapted for, and based on the needs and capacities of end-users, that is foremost Swedish municipalities.