“…This research was motivated by the need to gain an understanding of the variability of ground water recharge within an individual agricultural field and the factors that influence that variability. It is well recognized that surface and subsurface runoff to topographic lowlands can focus recharge at the subregional and local scales (Meyboom, 1966;Miller et al, 1985;Fortin et al, 1991) and at microtopographical scales (Schuh et al, 1993a(Schuh et al, , 1993b. Variations in recharge rates by more than a factor of two over distances of tens to hundreds of meters have been inferred from distributions of environmental tracers in some unconfined aquifers (e.g., Robertson and Cherry, 1989;Dunkle et al, 1993;Reilly et al, 1994;Solomon et al, 1995).…”