A wetland hydrology and water quality model incorporating surface water/groundwater interactions

Abstract

[1] In the last two decades the beneficial aspects of constructed treatment wetlands have been studied extensively. However, the importance of restored wetlands as a best management practice to improve the water quality of storm water runoff has only recently been appreciated. Furthermore, investigating surface water/groundwater interactions within wetlands is now acknowledged to be essential in order to better understand the effect of wetland hydrology on water quality. In this study, the development of a general comprehensive wetland model Wetland Solute Transport Dynamics (WETSAND) that has both surface flow and solute transport components is presented. The model incorporates surface water/groundwater interactions and accounts for upstream contributions from urbanized areas. The effect of restored wetlands on storm water runoff is also investigated by routing the overland flow through the wetland area, collecting the runoff within the stream, and transporting it to the receiving water using diffusion wave routing techniques. The computed velocity profiles are subsequently used to obtain water quality concentration distributions in wetland areas. The water quality component solves the advection-dispersion equation for several nitrogen and phosphorus constituents, and it also incorporates the surface water/groundwater interactions by including the incoming/outgoing mass due to the groundwater recharge/discharge. In addition, output from the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM5) is incorporated into this conceptual wetland model to simulate the runoff quantity and quality flowing into a wetland area from upstream urban sources. Additionally, the model can simulate a water control structure using storage routing principles and known stage-discharge spillway relationships.

Modelling stream flow with a discrete rainfall–runoff model and 37 GHz PDBT microwave observations: the Xiangjiang River basin case study

“…This is similar to soil moisture estimation done with 37GHz microwave observation (Lakshmi et al, 1997a, b). The studies of wetlands in the prairies of North America (Hayashi et al, 1998;Kazezyılmaz-Alhan et al, 2007;Shjeflo, 1968;Su et al, 2000;Winter and Rosenberry, 1995;Winter and Valk, 1989;Woo and Rowsell, 1993) show, however, that the hydrological processes in wetlands are very complicated and their description requires many spatially 30 detailed data that are difficult to access in most river basins. Particularly, it is difficult to estimate regional water storage from surface wetness, thus making the retrievals of the WSS and inundated area very useful.…”

Representing northern peatland microtopography and hydrology within the Community Land Model

“…Here we assume that the hollows are interconnected, and the surface water runoff from the hollows is determined by the slope of the raised-dome bog and the surface water height. Therefore for modification (5), we replace the formulation of surface water runoff using the for-mulation for wetland flow by Kadlec and Knight (2009) that includes a vertical stem density gradient and a bottom slope, modified by Kazezyılmaz-Alhan et al (2007):…”

Water quality of small seasonal wetlands in the Piedmont ecoregion, South Carolina, USA: Effects of land use and hydrological connectivity

“…Among these factors, water quality has generated substantial concern because it is not only essential for all biological growth and reproduction, but also directly interacts with other factors across multiple spatial and temporal scales. For example, land use (Maassen et al, 2012;Morrice et al, 2008), hydrological connections (Cook and Hauer, 2007;Kazezyilmaz-Alhan et al, 2007), soil and vegetation characteristics (Batzer et al, 2000;Montgomery and Eames, 2008) have all been demonstrated to be related to water quality. Thus, water quality serves as an important indicator for characterizing the effects of land use on wetlands, and furthermore, to direct policy and management of the surrounding watershed.…”