Abstract:
Water bodies are the common features on the land surface and are
important in respect of various water uses. Keeping in view their importance in many
hydrologic and economic fields, their hydrologic studies are of much use. Field and
theoretical studies on the interaction of large water bodies with aquifer are needed based
on the variability of flow pattern near the boundaries of the water body. Meyboom (1966)
and Freeze and Witherspoon (1967) are amongst the early investigators who stressed
upon the groundwater flow pattern around a lake. Winter (1981) has discussed the
uncertainties in the water balance of a lake. Some insight into the groundwater regime
and discharge estimates from lakes were provided by Winter (1978), who used two- and
three- dimensional steady state models for hypothetical groundwater-lake systems.
McBride and Pfannkuch (1975) used a numerical model to evaluate the vertical
component of groundwater flow of a lake for a number of hypothetical settings. In spite
of the early recognition of the lake-water management studies, few attempts (Munter and
Anderson, 1981; Winter, 1986; Cheng and Anderson, 1993, 1994) have been made
towards the understanding of the interaction of water bodies with aquifer. Munter and
Anderson (1981) showed that two- and three-dimensional groundwater flow models
provide flexible and effective means of calculating flow rates around lakes. They
observed that the anisotropy ratio of aquifer hydraulic conductivity has a significant
effect on the simulated head distribution around the lake and magnitude and distribution
of seepage from the lake. It is observed that no guidelines or method is available for
estimating the recharge from water bodies.
In this paper, a diagnostic curve is developed for estimating the recharge
from a water body, from the groundwater heads near the water body. The diagnostic
curve is developed using the results of MODFLOW application. Additionally, the
proposed diagnostic curve can also be used to estimate the aquifer parameters from
measured values of the groundwater head and recharge.
