Influence of regional setting on the interaction between shallow lakes and aquifers

Abstract

[1] Interaction between surface water and groundwater depends on the position of a lake within the regional flow system. The approach in this paper is to nest a local-scale twodimensional (2-D) lake aquifer model within a 1-D regional aquifer model to examine the effect of the regional setting on surface water-groundwater interaction. This extends previous steady state flow modeling, which is presented in earlier publications. The results indicate that the type of regional setting and position of the lake within that setting impose constraints on the near field flow geometry. Only nine of 39 previously identified flow regimes are possible in the regional flow system considered. Flow-through lakes are dominant and can occur anywhere within the regional flow. Recharge and discharge lakes are more likely to occur near the groundwater divide where regional hydraulic gradients are flattest and can be counteracted by local forcing in and near the lake. INDEX TERMS:1829 Hydrology: Groundwater hydrology; 1836 Hydrology: Hydrologic budget (1655); 1845 Hydrology: Limnology; 1890 Hydrology: Wetlands; KEYWORDS: groundwater, surface water, lake, aquifer, interaction, modeling, regional position Citation: Smith, A. J., and L. R. Townley, Influence of regional setting on the interaction between shallow lakes and aquifers, Water Resour.

Interaction of groundwater and shallow lakes on outwash sediments in the sub-humid Boreal Plains of Canada

“…The series of lakes within the Utikuma outwash study area are well connected to local and larger-scale groundwater flow systems, as anticipated for highly permeable sediments (Tóth, 1963;Smith and Townley, 2002). Along the topographic gradient between the three lakes in the study area, Lake 17 receives little to no input from groundwater sources and is sensitive to annual precipitation as a hydrologic input, as shown by the decline in stage over the duration of this study.…”

“…Most groundwater discharge occurs along one edge of the lake margin and creates a flow-through system (Born et al, 1979), as expected for lakes in connection with intermediate or regional groundwater flow systems (Schuster et al, 2003;Smith and Townley, 2002). The amount of groundwater discharge for Lake 16 in the Boreal Plain is 77% lower than groundwater discharge at Williams Lake in Minnesota (Siegel and Winter, 1980;Schuster et al, 2003), where the average water table gradient is on the same order of magnitude (Siegel and Winter, 1980).…”

A review of groundwater–surface water interactions in arid/semi‐arid wetlands and the consequences of salinity for wetland ecology

“…While most of the early studies were site-specific, more recent work has concentrated on developing generic relationships between the geometry of water bodies and the lake/wetland-aquifer interactions (e.g. Townley and Davidson, 1988;Nield et al, 1994;Townley and Trefry, 2000;Smith and Townley, 2002). A shortcoming of these approaches is that they generally do not adequately consider the fact that most lakes and wetlands contain bottom sediments, which have different hydraulic characteristics to the aquifer.…”

“…Wetland and groundwater flow geometry are also important controls on the exchange of groundwater, as demonstrated by a series of theoretical and field studies by Townley and Davidson (1988); Nield et al (1994); Townley and Trefry (2000); Smith and Townley (2002) and Turner and Townley (2006). These studies have highlighted that GW-SW interactions in wetlands can be broadly classified into four types of flow regimes ( Figure 4): (i) connected losing wetland-surface water from the wetland is lost (i.e.…”

Determination of groundwater flow-through regimes of shallow lakes and wetlands from numerical analysis of stable isotope and chloride tracer distribution patterns

“…They cover a small proportion of the coastal plain land surface area, and at the regional or 'far field' scale, each lake must be viewed as a component of a larger groundwater flow system (Smith and Townley, 2002). At the same time, each lake can be studied at a 'local scale', where the distribution of groundwater levels and flows can be described in the 'near field' (Fig.…”