Résumé
The deformation of natural systems in response to subsurface water storage and redistribution provides insightsinto the main water flow path within heterogeneous systems, including the role of faults or fractures. A longbaseline tiltmeter was installed in the low-noise underground laboratory of Rustrel (LSBB) to study the responseof the Fontaine de Vaucluse (FDV) karst hydrosystem to water cycle. Tilt data and piezometric levels recorded in aborehole close to the LSBB show a strong correlation with the discharge of the system observed at the FDV spring30 km away. Over several months, tilt data were recorded on three base lines, thus allowing, for the first time,to study the tilt gradient variation that appears homogeneous. Such information provides a significant constrainton hydrological processes leading to the measured deformation. Several deformation models were tested usingthe ADELI code to estimate the type of hydro-mechanical structure that could reproduce the measured tilt andits gradient. On one hand, models show that uniform loading at the surface produces a much smaller signal thanobserved on measured data. On the other hand, the deformation related to the filling of a fracture following aprecipitation event requires unrealistic fracture size. Finally, we found that a suitable hydro-mechanical modelcorresponds to the loading of numerous fractures at the interface between the saturated and unsaturated zones. Sucha configuration predicts a tilt distribution in agreement with observations. This study suggests that tilt networksinto a karst system should provide key observation for deciphering hydrological processes