Simulating Groundwater-Streamflow Connections in the Upper Colorado River Basin
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Tran_etal_gw_lateral_flow_fina ...
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2021-03-17
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Final Accepted Manuscript
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Univ Arizona, Dept Hydrol & Atmospher SciIssue Date
2020-04-03
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WILEYCitation
Tran, H., Zhang, J., Cohard, J.‐M., Condon, L.E. and Maxwell, R.M. (2020), Simulating Groundwater‐Streamflow Connections in the Upper Colorado River Basin. Groundwater, 58: 392-405. doi:10.1111/gwat.13000Journal
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© 2020, National Ground Water Association.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
In mountain, snow driven catchments, snowmelt is supposed to be the primary contribution to river streamflows during spring. In these catchments the contribution of groundwater is not well documented because of the difficulty to monitor groundwater in such complex environment with deep aquifers. In this study we use an integrated hydrologic model to conduct numerical experiments that help quantify the effect of lateral groundwater flow on total annual and peak streamflow in predevelopment conditions. Our simulations focus on the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB; 2.8 × 105 km2 ) a well-documented mountain catchment for which both streamflow and water table measurements are available for several important sub-basins. For the simulated water year, our results suggest an increase in peak flow of up to 57% when lateral groundwater flow processes are included-an unexpected result for flood conditions generally assumed independent of groundwater. Additionally, inclusion of lateral groundwater flow moderately improved the model match to observations. The correlation coefficient for mean annual flows improved from 0.84 for the no lateral groundwater flow simulation to 0.98 for the lateral groundwater flow one. Spatially we see more pronounced differences between lateral and no lateral groundwater flow cases in areas of the domain with steeper topography. We also found distinct differences in the magnitude and spatial distribution of streamflow changes with and without lateral groundwater flow between Upper Colorado River Sub-basins. A sensitivity test that scaled hydraulic conductivity over two orders of magnitude was conducted for the lateral groundwater flow simulations. These results show that the impact of lateral groundwater flow is as large or larger than an order of magnitude change in hydraulic conductivity. While our results focus on the UCRB, we feel that these simulations have relevance to other headwaters systems worldwide.Note
12 month embargo; published online: 17 March 2020ISSN
0017-467XEISSN
1745-6584PubMed ID
32181894Version
Final accepted manuscriptae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1111/gwat.13000
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