Groundwater levels and spring discharges

The map shows the current drought situation in Switzerland's most important groundwater resources. The classification into a drought level is based on the current measured values of selected, representative observation stations. The observation stations are assigned to a continuous near-surface groundwater body so that drought levels in groundwater and spring discharge can be viewed in a single map. Where several stations are assigned to a groundwater body, their average value is taken. If an area is not coloured, no measured values are available for this groundwater body (e.g. due to incorrect measurements, measurement failure or no observation stations).

Compared to the maps of the drought index, the map of groundwater has a significantly higher spatial resolution, since the drought index is only determined for 38 regions. These regions are based on the existing federal warning regions and additionally on the catchment area boundaries of surface waters. In most cases, these regions do not correspond to the groundwater bodies. For this reason, we based the classification of groundwater drought levels on groundwater bodies, which are based, among other things, on data on geology, water use and groundwater availability.

 Data basis: The measured values for groundwater levels and spring discharge come from the QUANT module (admin.ch) of the National Groundwater Monitoring NAQUA monitoring network (Federal Office for the Environment), as well as from several cantonal observation Stations. The areas of the groundwater bodies correspond to those in the Swiss groundwater bodies dataset, with the note that some areas have been locally adjusted to better correspond to the cantonal hydrogeological maps.