Abstract
Urban stormwater management is turning towards use of infiltration facilities, directing water that would have previously flowed overland into subsurface flow paths. Stormwater infiltration alters soil moisture, groundwater, and streamflow regimes, but it has been unclear how the spatial arrangement of infiltration-focused facilities affects catchment-scale water balances. This project used a physically based numerical model to investigate how spatial arrangements of infiltration facilities and subsurface media affects partitioning of water between unsaturated and saturated zones and baseflow duration and timing. More spatially distributed infiltration facilities, as compared to spatially clustered facilities, produced greater unsaturated zone storage, less saturated zone storage, and more total subsurface storage in scenarios where surface ponding was not severe. In silt, widespread surface ponding was observed. In sand, baseflow response to precipitation was delayed with clustered infiltration compared to distributed infiltration. These results can be used to guide decisions about how the spatial arrangement of stormwater infiltration facilities can affect urban catchment management goals, such as increasing plant available water and aquifer recharge or producing desired baseflow timing.
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Data Availability Statement
The following data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available in a repository or online [Choat (2019). ParFlow: Spatial arrangement of stormwater infiltration affects subsurface storage and baseflow, HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/c4774f2ed6124417971c3adb845965a4]. All input files for running spin-up and transient simulations, the main executable files for each simulated scenario, and the main files used for post-processing are included.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments by Michael Ronayne and Ryan Bailey and anonymous reviewers. This work was partially supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project 1015939. This work utilized the RMACC Summit supercomputer (Anderson et al. 2017), which is supported by the National Science Foundation (awards ACI-1532235 and ACI-1532236), the University of Colorado Boulder, and Colorado State University. The Summit supercomputer is a joint effort of the University of Colorado Boulder and Colorado State University.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 25 • Issue 11 • November 2020
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 16, 2019
Accepted: Jun 16, 2020
Published online: Aug 31, 2020
Published in print: Nov 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Jan 31, 2021
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Base flow
- Buildings
- Environmental engineering
- Facilities (by type)
- Flow (fluid dynamics)
- Fluid dynamics
- Fluid mechanics
- Hydrologic engineering
- Hydrology
- Infiltration
- Infrastructure
- Municipal water
- Storage facilities
- Stormwater management
- Structural engineering
- Structures (by type)
- Underground storage
- Urban and regional development
- Water (by type)
- Water and water resources
- Water management
- Water storage
- Water supply
- Water supply systems
- Water treatment
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