Karst groundwater budget and discharge regime of Banja Spring near Petnica

Detailed hydrological and hydrogeological assessments of karst spring discharge require information about the groundwater regime in the study area/watershed. However, groundwater regime monitoring is often organized locally and sporadically, as required for specific studies or projects, and seldom lasts longer than one year. On the other hand, if time series of quantitative parameters are shorter than 15 years, the watershed is considered to be ungauged. As a result, discharge regime and karst aquifer budget assessments of ungauged watersheds can be misleading. To minimize water budget assessment errors, available time series need to be extended as far as possible. Regression models are commonly used to extend, simulate or fill gaps in existing time series. The paper presents an application of multiple linear regression to extend the existing time series of mean monthly discharges of Banja Spring (at Petnica, western Serbia), in order to cover the entire study period (1960-2006)