Estimating shallow groundwater recharge in the headwaters of the Liverpool Plains using SWAT

Abstract

Abstract:A physically based catchment model (SWAT) was used for recharge estimation in the headwaters of the Liverpool Plains in NSW, Australia. The study used water balance modelling at the catchment scale to derive parameters for long-term recharge estimation. The derived parameters were further assessed at a subcatchment scale. Modelling results suggest that recharge occurs only in wet years, and is dominated by a few significant years or periods. The results were matched by independently observed bore data across the study area in the past 30 years. The study suggests that variations in recharge can be primarily explained by the climatic factor rather than land-use changes. The study estimated less recharge than previous studies where point scale modelling results have been scaled up to the catchment scale. It suggests that a catchment-based approach is needed for recharge estimation at the catchment scale. The study indicates that the current model may overestimate runoff on cracking vertosols under dry conditions where improvement is likely needed. The need for long-term runoff and bore monitoring data to confidently establish the relationships among water balance/recharge estimation and groundwater level variation is discussed. SWAT provides an alternative to point scale modelling for evaluating recharge and its response to changes in land use and land management.

Soil–aquifer phenomena affecting groundwater under vertisols: a review

“…Deep cracks form an additional mechanism of deep evaporation that supports the chloride profiles and low water content in the matrix under vertisols. Sun and Cornish (2005) used SWAT to model runoff and groundwater recharge at the catchment scale (∼ 500 km 2 ) in a vertisolic catchment in eastern Australia. Considering water balances at this scale, they concluded that recharge models need to have a component that enables taking moisture out of the lower soil profile or groundwater during dry periods.…”

Effects of temperature change on water discharge, and sediment and nutrient loading in the lower Pearl River basin based on SWAT modelling

“…The SWAT model has been applied successfully throughout the world, for example in Asia (Hu et al, 2007;Ouyang et al, 2008;Somura et al, 2009), the USA (Ficklin et al, 2009), Europe (Panagopoulos et al, 2007), and other regions (Sun & Cornish, 2005;In the present study, we aimed to estimate the impacts of temperature change on discharge, sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus loads. We used SWAT and studied the NPS pollution from the land basin on the estuary under different temperature change scenarios for the lower Pearl River Delta.…”

Assessment of integrated watershed health based on the natural environment, hydrology, water quality, and aquatic ecology

“…Depending on the specific management objectives, placing more weight on some ecological attributes than on others and using optional sub-indices may be appropriate. At this point, the process becomes subjective and a logical decision framework can be used to solicit and document expert opinions (Smith et al, 2003). Weighting was not used in this study for integrated assessment.…”

“…Cook et al (2015) examined these relationships in five watersheds along the Virginia-Kentucky border and explored the effects of both the water quality and habitat on benthic macro-invertebrates by using data from a 3-year field study and Virginia Stream Condition Index (VSCI) scores to evaluate site-specific environmental variables (land use, habitat metrics, and water-quality parameters). Tango and Batiuk (2016) analyzed the interactions that affect the watershed and bay-water-quality recovery responses to management actions and a range of health conditions and impairments by measuring the physical, chemical, and biological parameters in Chesapeake Bay.…”

“…The SWAT model has been successfully applied to a number of river basins and is widely used to study the long-term effects of hydrological (e.g., Sun and Cornish, 2005;Wan et al, 2013;Karlsson et al, 2016;Sellami et al, 2016;Chung et al, 2017) and environmental (e.g., Eckhardt and Ulbrich, 2003;Rosenberg et al, 2003;Bouraoui et al, 2004;Chaplot, 2007;Mehdi et al, 2015;Zhou and Li, 2015) changes. Thus, the use of this qualified watershed model is highly useful for assessments of continuous timeseries changes and spatial-distribution changes in watershed information.…”