Estimation of Spatio-Temporally Variable Groundwater Recharge Using a Rainfall-Runoff Model
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18, Issue 2
Abstract
This paper describes the radar-based estimation of groundwater recharge by means of distributed hydrologic modeling used to estimate components of the hydrologic water balance. Conventional management of water resources has focused on groundwater as a separate constituent of surface water in hydrologic systems, but factors such as precipitation, surface runoff, base flow, evapotranspiration, and water demands determine the change in storage in a stream-aquifer system that varies in both time and space. The temporal and spatial variability of groundwater recharge have been estimated in the eastern outcrop of the Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer, located in Oklahoma. Distributed maps of precipitation from radar were corrected for bias using rain gauges and used as input to a distributed hydrologic model. Distributed grids of infiltration were combined with evapotranspiration to extend groundwater recharge estimates from three years, when streamflow records existed, to 13 years, using archival radar. The results show that better characterization of precipitation and runoff, achieved with bias-corrected radar, produces more reliable estimates of runoff and groundwater recharge than those derived from the use of rain gauge data alone.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18 • Issue 2 • February 2013
Pages: 237 - 249
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 15, 2011
Accepted: Sep 13, 2011
Published online: Sep 24, 2011
Published in print: Feb 1, 2013
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