Chemical and Isotope Monitoring at Lake Albano (Central Italy): Water-rock Interaction and Climate Change Effects

Albano is a typical maar lake showing mainly a bicarbonate-alkali geochemical facies. However, chemical monitoring shows a switch toward an alkaline earth composition in the deeper layers. Water isotope compositions of the lake from this study are compared with lake and groundwater data from the literature and are used to infer meteoric recharge and humidity variations. Enhanced evaporation is inferred, and in conjunction with a reduction in lake volume, is linked to a global relative humidity drop of about 3% by our model, which agrees with the ground level measurements during the last 20 years.