Title
Simulating River/Lake-Groundwater Exchanges in Arid River Basins: An Improvement Constrained by Lake Surface Area Dynamics and Evapotranspiration
Abstract
Surface water-groundwater interactions in arid zones are characterized by water exchange processes in a complex system comprising intermittent streams/terminal lakes, shallow aquifers, riparian zone evapotranspiration, and groundwater withdrawal. Notable challenges arise when simulating such hydrological systems; for example, field observations are scarce, and hydrogeological parameters exhibit considerable spatial heterogeneity. To reduce the simulation uncertainties, in addition to groundwater head and river discharge measurements, we adopted remote sensing-based evapotranspiration data and lake area dynamics as known conditions to calibrate the model. We chose the Ejina Basin, located in the lower reaches of the Heihe River Basin in arid northwest China, as the study area to validate our modelling approach. The hydrological system of this basin is characterized by intensive, spatiotemporally variable surface water-groundwater interactions. The areas of the terminal lakes into which all river runoff flows vary significantly depending on the ratio between river runoff and lake evaporation. Simulation results with a monthly time step from 2000 to 2017 indicate that river leakage accounted for approximately 61% of the total river runoff. Our study shows that for areas where surface water and groundwater observations are sparse, combining remote sensing product data of surface water areas and evapotranspiration can effectively reduce the uncertainty in coupled surface water and groundwater simulations.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.3390/rs14071657
REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
DocType
Volume
surface water-groundwater interaction, evapotranspiration, Heihe River, terminal lake, water balance, remote sensing observations
Journal
14
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
7
2072-4292
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Peter Vasilevskiy100.34
Ping Wang21012.69
Sergey Pozdniakov300.34
Tianye Wang400.34
Yichi Zhang51198.65
Xuejing Zhang600.34
Jingjie Yu700.68