Identification of groundwater mean transit times of precipitation and riverbank infiltration by two‐component lumped parameter models

Groundwater transit time is an essential hydrologic metric for groundwater resources management. However, especially in tropical environments, studies on the transit time distribution (TTD) of groundwater infiltration and its corresponding mean transit time (mTT) have been extremely limited due to data sparsity. In this study, we primarily use stable isotopes to examine the TTDs and their mTTs of both vertical and horizontal infiltration at a riverbank infiltration area in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD), representative of the tropical climate in Asian monsoon regions. Precipitation, river water, groundwater, and local ponding surface water were sampled for 3 to 9 years and analysed for stable isotopes (δ¹⁸O and δ²H), providing a unique data set of stable isotope records for a tropical region. We quantified the contribution that the two sources contributed to the local shallow groundwater by a novel concept of two‐component lumped parameter models (LPMs) that are solved using δ¹⁸O records. The study illustrates that two‐component LPMs, in conjunction with hydrological and isotopic measurements, are able to identify subsurface flow conditions and water mixing at riverbank infiltration systems. However, the predictive skill and the reliability of the models decrease for locations farther from the river, where recharge by precipitation dominates, and a low‐permeable aquitard layer above the highly permeable aquifer is present. This specific setting impairs the identifiability of model parameters. For river infiltration, short mTTs (<40 weeks) were determined for sites closer to the river (<200 m), whereas for the precipitation infiltration, the mTTs were longer (>80 weeks) and independent of the distance to the river. The results not only enhance the understanding of the groundwater recharge dynamics in the VMD but also suggest that the highly complex mechanisms of surface–groundwater interaction can be conceptualized by exploiting two‐component LPMs in general. The model concept could thus be a powerful tool for better understanding both the hydrological functioning of mixing processes and the movement of different water components in riverbank infiltration systems.     

Short‐term erosion rates from a 7Be inventory balance

Detailed soil erosion studies bene?t from the ability to quantify the magnitude of erosion over time scales appropriate to the process. An inventory balance for ⁷Be was used to calculate sediment erosion in a 30·73 m² plot during a series of runoff‐producing thunderstorms occurring over three days at the Deep Loess Research Station in Treynor, Iowa, USA. The inventory balance included determination of the pre‐ and post‐storm ⁷Be inventories in the soil, the atmospheric in?ux of ⁷Be during the event, and pro?les of the ⁷Be activity in the soil following the atmospheric deposition. The erosion calculated in the plot using the ⁷Be inventory balance was 0·058 g cm^?2, which is 23 per cent of the annual average erosion determined using ¹³⁷Cs inventories. The calculated erosion from the mass balance is similar to the 0·059 g cm^?2 of erosion estimated from the amount of sediment collected at the outlet of the 6 ha ?eld during the study period and the delivery ratio (0·64). The inventory balance of ⁷Be provides a new means for evaluating soil erosion over the time period most relevant to quantifying the prediction of erosion from runoff. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

江苏王港盐沼的现代沉积速率

Coastal salt-marshes represent an important coastal wetland system. The total area of coastal wetlands exceeds 5000 km2 in Jiangsu Province, China, but it is decreasing rapidly in response to the intense reclamation activities and coastal erosion along a part of the coastline. Hence, two types of plants, Spartina angelica and Spartina alterniflora, were introduced successively into the Jiangsu coastal areas, in order to protect the coastline from erosion and to increase the accumulation rate. Pb-210 and Cs-137 analyses were carried out for sediment samples from the salt-marshes of Wanggang to determine the sedimentation rate, on the basis of an evaluation of the background activity values and the factors affecting the enrichment of Pb-210. Analysis of a typical sediment column of the tidal flat shows that there is weak absorption of Pb-210 in the silt-dominated sediment. Because of the influences of factors such as storm events, bioturbation, material sources and analytical error, some abnormal data points appear in the Pb-210 record. After ignoring these data the calculated sedimentation rate was 3.3 cm yr-1 on average. Based upon analysis of the Cs-137 dating, the rate since 1963 was 3.1 cm yr-1 on average, similar to the data by Pb-210 dating and the previous studies. The dating results show that there were three stages of sedimentation, with the most rapid accretion being taking place after Spartina angelica was introduced into the area. The study also shows that at the stage of Spartina alterniflora growth, the accretion rate was higher than on the flat surface with the same elevation without the cover of this plant.     

庐枞丘陵区某铁矿包气带污染预测评价

以铁矿为代表的金属矿山在选矿与生产过程中会形成含有多种重金属的污废水,一经泄漏,首先对包气带形成污染;而庐枞丘陵地区第四系松散层较薄,包气带防污能力较弱;因此,以包气带污染预测为基础,开展包气带防污能力的研究,对后期地下水污染的防治与保护都有重要意义。本文以安徽省丘陵地区某铁矿为例,通过渗水试验评价包气带防污性能,并采用数值法分别进行饱水与非饱水渗透条件下的污染预测评价,为其它类似地区提供了可借鉴的方法和理论。     

石家庄地面水回渗地下过程的氮行为影响试验研究

石家庄是我国北方地下水位下降较大的城市之一,利用其毗邻滹沱河宽阔河滩,地面水可直接入渗补给地下水的有利水文地质条件,实施地面水回渗地下工程,将具有现实意义.为探索地面水回渗后的水质变化,该文针对地面水在回渗过程中对水质起限制性影响的氮行为作用进行了模拟试验研究.结果显示,利用2 m厚的滹沱河细砂土及与粘土按一定比例的混合砂土层,可对间歇式实施地面水回渗中的铵氮组分形成一定容量的截留去除,并且该截留量又在随回渗次数的增加而缓慢下降,当采用人工增加环境碱度及湿度的办法后可消除这种下降.同时,还显示对回渗水中硝酸氮的去除率不高,但若采用人工添加乙醇碳源和接种优势脱氮微生物菌种方法,硝酸氮的去除率将会得到较大提高.     

紫色土典型三角形层状剖面入渗模拟

通过室内特制的土壤水分入渗试验装置,分别设置上粗下细和上细下粗两种典型不同质地紫色土三角形层状剖面,探讨典型不规则层次结构的土壤入渗特性。结果显示,同一三角形层状剖面入渗,粗质土半剖面的垂直湿润锋随时间推进速度快于细质土。对于粗质土,上细下粗剖面设置下其半剖面的垂直湿润锋随时间推进速度快于上粗下细,但对于细质土,两种层状剖面设置下其垂直湿润锋随时间推进速度差异不明显。无论上粗下细,还是上细下粗,两种层状剖面对斜面湿润锋变化曲线影响不大。两种层状剖面入渗,湿润锋、入渗速率与时间均呈极显著幂函数关系。建立的紫色土典型三角形层状剖面入渗模型,经验证,模拟值与实测值具有非常好的一致性,且可与经验模型相互转换,模型参数也具有一定的物理意义。     

土壤入渗特性的空间变异性及土壤转换函数

以在杨陵一级阶地上进行的入渗试验为基础,利用多重分形和联合多重分形方法,研究分析了土壤入渗特性在多尺度上的空间变异性及与土壤物理特性的相关性,并在此基础上建立了土壤入渗特性的土壤转换函数。研究表明:土壤入渗特性具有多重分形特征,观测尺度上,稳定入渗率、前30 min累积入渗量的空间变异都主要由粗粉粒和粘粒含量的空间变异造成。在多尺度上,稳定入渗率的空间变异受土壤容重、粗粉粒和粘粒含量的空间分布影响显著,前30 min累积入渗量的空间变异受粗粉粒和粘粒含量的空间分布影响显著,与观测尺度上的影响因素相同。基于联合多重分形分析建立的稳定入渗率的土壤转换函数的计算误差较小,前30 min累积入渗量的土壤转换函数的计算误差较大。     

Very slow erosion rates and landscape preservation across the southwestern slope of the Ladakh Range,India

Erosion rates are key to quantifying the timescales over which different topographic and geomorphic domains develop in mountain landscapes. Geomorphic and terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) methods were used to determine erosion rates of the arid, tectonically quiescent Ladakh Range, northern India. Five different geomorphic domains are identified and erosion rates are determined for three of the domains using TCN ¹⁰Be concentrations. Along the range divide between 5600 and 5700 m above sea level (asl), bedrock tors in the periglacial domain are eroding at 5.0 ± 0.5 to 13.1 ± 1.2 meters per million years (m/m.y.)., principally by frost shattering. At lower elevation in the unglaciated domain, erosion rates for tributary catchments vary between 0.8 ± 0.1 and 2.0 ± 0.3 m/m.y. Bedrock along interfluvial ridge crests between 3900 and 5100 m asl that separate these tributary catchments yield erosion rates <0.7 ± 0.1 m/m.y. and the dominant form of bedrock erosion is chemical weathering and grusification. Erosion rates are fastest where glaciers conditioned hillslopes above 5100 m asl by over‐steepening slopes and glacial debris is being evacuated by the fluvial network. For range divide tors, the long‐term duration of the erosion rate is considered to be 40–120 ky. By evaluating measured ¹⁰Be concentrations in tors along a model ¹⁰Be production curve, an average of ~24 cm is lost instantaneously every ~40 ky. Small (<4 km²) unglaciated tributary catchments and their interfluve bedrock have received very little precipitation since ~300 ka and the long‐term duration of their erosion rates is 300–750 ky and >850 ky, respectively. These results highlight the persistence of very slow erosion in different geomorphic domains across the southwestern slope of the Ladakh Range, which on the scale of the orogen records spatial changes in the locus of deformation and the development of an orogenic rain shadow north of the Greater Himalaya. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the prediction of the Toce alpine basin floods with distributed hydrologic models

With the objective of improving flood predictions, in recent years sophisticated continuous hydrologic models that include complex land‐surface sub‐models have been developed. This has produced a significant increase in parameterization; consequently, applications of distributed models to ungauged basins lacking specific data from field campaigns may become redundant. The objective of this paper is to produce a parsimonious and robust distributed hydrologic model for flood predictions in Italian alpine basins. Application is made to the Toce basin (area 1534 km²). The Toce basin was a case study of the RAPHAEL European Union research project, during which a comprehensive set of hydrologic, meteorological and physiographic data were collected, including the hydrologic analysis of the 1996–1997 period. Two major floods occurred during this period. We compare the FEST04 event model (which computes rainfall abstraction and antecedent soil moisture conditions through the simple Soil Conservation Service curve number method) and two continuous hydrologic models, SDM and TDM (which differ in soil water balance scheme, and base flow and runoff generation computations). The simple FEST04 event model demonstrated good performance in the prediction of the 1997 flood, but shows limits in the prediction of the long and moderate 1996 flood. More robust predictions are obtained with the parsimonious SDM continuous hydrologic model, which uses a simple one‐layer soil water balance model and an infiltration excess mechanism for runoff generation, and demonstrates good performance in both long‐term runoff modelling and flood predictions. Instead, the use of a more sophisticated continuous hydrologic model, the TDM, that simulates soil moisture dynamics in two layers of soil, and computes runoff and base flow using some TOPMODEL concepts, does not seem to be advantageous for this alpine basin. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessing the impact of the hydraulic properties of a crusted soil on overland flow modelling at the field scale

Soil surface crusts are widely reported to favour Hortonian runoff, but are not explicitly represented in most rainfall‐runoff models. The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of soil surface crusts on infiltration and runoff modelling at two spatial scales, i.e. the local scale and the plot scale. At the local scale, two separate single ring infiltration experiments are undertaken. The first is performed on the undisturbed soil, whereas the second is done after removal of the soil surface crust. The HYDRUS 2D two‐dimensional vertical infiltration model is then used in an inverse modelling approach, first to estimate the soil hydraulic properties of the crust and the subsoil, and then the effective hydraulic properties of the soil represented as a single uniform layer. The results show that the crust hydraulic conductivity is 10 times lower than that of the subsoil, thus illustrating the limiting role the crust has on infiltration. Moving up to the plot scale, a rainfall‐runoff model coupling the Richards equation to a transfer function is used to simulate Hortonian overland flow hydrographs. The previously calculated hydraulic properties are used, and a comparison is undertaken between a single‐layer and a double‐layer representation of the crusted soil. The results of the rainfall‐runoff model show that the soil hydraulic properties calculated at the local scale give acceptable results when used to model runoff at the plot scale directly, without any numerical calibration. Also, at the plot scale, no clear improvement of the results can be seen when using a double‐layer representation of the soil in comparison with a single homogeneous layer. This is due to the hydrological characteristics of Hortonian runoff, which is triggered by a rainfall intensity exceeding the saturated hydraulic conductivity of the soil surface. Consequently, the rainfall‐runoff model is more sensitive to rainfall than to the subsoil's hydrodynamic properties. Therefore, the use of a double‐layer soil model to represent runoff on a crusted soil does not seem necessary, as the increase of precision in the soil discretization is not justified by a better performance of the model. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.