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Interpreting streamflow generation mechanisms from integrated surface subsurface flow models of a riparian wetland and catchment
Using a fully coupled surface water-groundwater model to quantify streamflow components
Evaluation of outputs from automated baseflow separation methods against simulated baseflow from a physically based, surface water-groundwater flow model
Baseflow is often considered to be the groundwater discharge component of streamflow. It is commonly estimated using conceptual models, recursive filters or a combination of the two. However, it is difficult to validate these methods due to the current challenges of measuring baseflow in the field. In this study, simulation of a synthetic catchment's response to rainfall is carried out using a fully integrated surface water-groundwater flow model. A series of rainfall events with differing recovery periods and varied antecedent moisture conditions is considered to span a range of different streamflow generation dynamics. Baseflow is estimated for the outlet hydrograph of the synthetic catchment using a selection of commonly used automated baseflow separation methods. These estimates are compared to the baseflow signal obtained from the numerical model, which serves as the control experiment. Results from these comparisons show that depending on the method used, automated baseflow separation underestimates the simulated baseflow by as much as 28%, or overestimates it by up to 74%, during rainfall events. No separation method is found to be clearly superior to the others, as the performance of the various methods varies with different soil types, antecedent moisture conditions and rainfall events. The differences between the various approaches clearly demonstrate that the baseflow separation methods investigated are not universally applicable. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A hydraulic mixing-cell method to quantify the groundwater component of streamflow within spatially distributed fully integrated surface water–groundwater flow models
The complexity of available hydrological models continues to increase, with fully integrated surface water–groundwater flow and transport models now available. Nevertheless, an accurate quantification of streamflow generation mechanisms within these models is not yet possible. For example, such models do not report the groundwater component of streamflow at a particular point along the stream. Instead, the groundwater component of streamflow is approximated either from tracer transport simulations or by the sum of exchange fluxes between the surface and the subsurface along the river. In this study, a hydraulic mixing-cell (HMC) method is developed and tested that allows to accurately determine the groundwater component of streamflow by using only the flow solution from fully integrated surface water–groundwater flow models. By using the HMC method, the groundwater component of streamflow can be extracted accurately at any point along a stream provided the subsurface/surface exchanges along the stream are calculated by the model. A key advantage of the HMC method is that only hydraulic information is used, thus the simulation of tracer transport is not required. Two numerical experiments are presented, the first to test the HMC method and the second to demonstrate that it quantifies the groundwater component of streamflow accurately.