Flood Routing in Channels with Bank Seepage

Abstract

Bank seepage occurs along natural streams bounded by an alluvial material when the passage of a flood wave produces a rise and fall in the stream stage. Owing to the difficulties of measuring flow rates in a porous medium, the quantity of bank seepage and its effect on the attenuation of a flood wave have not been determined from experimental observations. As an alternative for the purposes of this study, the equations of motion were used to describe flood flows in an idealized rectangular channel bounded by banks of a homogeneous, isotropic, porous medium in which the Boussinesq equation governs flow. The channel and the banks were assumed to be underlain by an impervious layer. Numerical simulation of a sinusoidal flood wave in the channel showed that bank seepage causes significant attenuation of the wave in narrow channels bounded by a relatively pervious material. This attenuation is characterized by a reduction in the hydrograph peak and sustenance of the flow during recession. In wide channels and in channels bounded by a relatively impervious material, no significant attenuation of the flood wave occurs.

Analytical solutions and computer programs for hydraulic interaction of stream-aquifer systems

“…Some situations in stream-aquifer interaction, such as the presence of complicated aquifer boundary conditions, aquifer heterogeneity, or complicated stream discharge and stage relations, are not handled easily by use of analytical methods. In these cases, it may be necessary to use numerical-modeling methods that couple open-channel flow equations and the ground-water flow equation to simultaneously solve for stream stage and ground-water heads (Pinder and Sauer, 1971;Zitta and Wiggert, 1971;Prudic, 1989;Hunt, 1990;Swain and Wexler, 1996;and Perkins and Koussis, 1996). Numerical-modeling methods that can be applied to such situations are outside the scope of this work.…”

Modeling stream–aquifer interactions with linear response functions

“…Stream-aquifer interactions and movement of bank storage between the aquifer and river can be simulated using analytical solutions (Cooper and Rorabaugh, 1963;Hantush, 1967;Dever and Cleary, 1979;Moench et al, 1974;Gill, 1985;Hunt, 1990;Govindaraju and Koelliker, 1994;Zlotnik and Huang, 1999;Moench and Barlow, 2000;Harada et al, 2000;Lal, 2001;Hantush et al, 2002) or by applying numerical methods (Pinder and Sauer, 1971;Zitta and Wiggert, 1971;Mariño, 1975;MorelSeytoux, 1975;Gureghian, 1978;Perkins and Koussis, 1996;Saquillace, 1996;Whiting and Pomeranets, 1997;Chen and Chen, 2003;Hilberts et al, 2004). Some of the above cited analytical solutions are actually quasi-analytical as they require either numerical inversion of the Laplace transforms or some iterative techniques (Zlotnik and Huang, 1999;Moench and Barlow, 2000;Lal, 2001).…”

The role of antecedent groundwater heads in controlling transient aquifer storage and flood peak attenuation in karst watersheds

“…Transient aquifer storage, defined herein as the temporary loss of river water to aquifers during floods and subsequent return to the river, has been recognized in contributing to flood peak attenuation (Cooper Jr and Rorabaugh, ; Zitta and Wiggert, ; Pinder and Saurer, ; Moench and Barlow, ; Chen and Chen, ). Transient aquifer storage typically occurs in watersheds that cross hydraulic boundaries, where upstream portions of the watershed are underlain by low‐permeability substrate and downstream portions of the watershed are underlain by substrate with higher permeability (Bonnaci, 1996; Gulley et al, , ).…”