Modeling groundwater responses to climate change in the Prairie Pothole Region
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Abstract. Shallow groundwater in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is predominantly recharged by snowmelt in the spring and supplies water for evapotranspiration through the summer and fall. This two-way exchange is underrepresented in current land surface models. Furthermore, the impacts of climate change on the groundwater recharge rates are uncertain. In this paper, we use a coupled land–groundwater model to investigate the hydrological cycle of shallow groundwater in the PPR and study its response to climate change at the end of the 21st century. The results show that the model does a reasonably good job of simulating the timing of recharge. The mean water table depth (WTD) is well simulated, except for the fact that the model predicts a deep WTD in northwestern Alberta. The most significant change under future climate conditions occurs in the winter, when warmer temperatures change the rain/snow partitioning, delaying the time for snow accumulation/soil freezing while advancing early melting/thawing. Such changes lead to an earlier start to a longer recharge season but with lower recharge rates. Different signals are shown in the eastern and western PPR in the future summer, with reduced precipitation and drier soils in the east but little change in the west. The annual recharge increased by 25 % and 50 % in the eastern and western PPR, respectively. Additionally, we found that the mean and seasonal variation of the simulated WTD are sensitive to soil properties; thus, fine-scale soil information is needed to improve groundwater simulation on the regional scale.Keywords:
Snowmelt
Meltwater
Water balance
Not withstanding the seasonal vagaries of both rainfall amount and snowcover extent, the Himalayan rivers retain their basic perennial character. However, it is the component of snowmelt yield that accounts for some 60 to 70 percent of the total annual flow volumes from Hamilayan watersheds. On this large hydropotential predominantly depends the temporal performance of hydropower generation and major irrigation projects. The large scale effects of Himalayan snowcover on the hydrologic responses of a few selected catchments in western Himalayas was studied. The antecedent effects of snowcover area on long and short term meltwater yields can best be analyzed by developing appropriate hydrologic models forecasting the pattern of snowmelt as a function of variations in snowcover area. It is hoped that these models would be of practical value in the management of water resources. The predictability of meltwater for the entire snowmelt season was studied, as was the concurrent flow variation in adjacent watersheds, and their hydrologic significance. And the applicability of the Snowmelt-Runoff Model for real time forecast of daily discharges during the major part of the snowmelt season is examined.
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Abstract The contribution of snow meltwater to catchment streamflow can be quantified through hydrograph separation analyses for which stable water isotopes (18O, 2H) are used as environmental tracers. For this, the spatial and temporal variability of the isotopic composition of meltwater needs to be captured by the sampling method. This study compares an optimized snowmelt lysimeter system and an unheated precipitation collector with focus on their ability to capture snowmelt rates and the isotopic composition of snowmelt. The snowmelt lysimeter system consists of three individual unenclosed lysimeters at ground level with a surface of 0.14 m2 each. The unheated precipitation collector consists of a 30 cm-long, extended funnel with its orifice at 2.3 m above ground. Daily snowmelt samples were collected with both systems during two snowfall-snowmelt periods in 2016. The snowmelt lysimeter system provided more accurate measurements of natural melt rates and allowed for capturing the small-scale variability of snowmelt process at the plot scale, such as lateral meltwater flow from the surrounding snowpack. Because of the restricted volume of the extended funnel, daily melt rates from the unheated precipitation collector were up to 43% smaller compared to the snowmelt lysimeter system. Overall, both snowmelt collection methods captured the general temporal evolution of the isotopic signature in snowmelt.
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Seasonal snowmelt water from mountainous areas is critical for water supply in arid regions. Snowmelt profoundly affects the parameterization of the Budyko framework, which describes the long-term relationship between precipitation and runoff. This is true in Xinjiang, a representative arid region in Northwest China. However, the effects of snowmelt water on the water balance in this region remain unclear. Based on observed runoff data in 64 catchments of Xinjiang during 2000–2010, we analyzed the effects of meltwater in the local water balance both spatially and temporally through the Budyko curve and redundancy analysis (RDA) methods, and then investigated the influences of changing meltwater on runoff. Inclusion of snowmelt water into the item of the water availability significantly improved the performance of the Budyko equation for predicting runoff. The results of RDA showed that snowmelt water, potential evaporation (PET), and rainfall combined explained 66% of the spatial variations in runoff, while the individual effects of snowmelt water, PET, and rainfall were 19%, 13%, and 1%, respectively, with the interactions among the three variables being 16%. These results suggest that the accelerating changes of meltwater due to climate warming will significantly alter the regimes of runoff in these regions.
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Abstract Snowmelt contributes a significant fraction of groundwater recharge in snow‐dominated regions, making its accurate quantification crucial for sustainable water resources management. While several components of the hydrological cycle can be measured directly, catchment‐scale recharge can only be quantified indirectly. Stable water isotopes are often used as tracers to estimate snowmelt recharge, even though estimates based on stable water isotopes are biased due to the large variations of δ 2 H and δ 18 O in snow and the difficulty to measure snowmelt directly. To overcome this gap, a new tracer method based on on‐site measurements of dissolved He, 40 Ar, 84 Kr, N 2 , O 2 , and CO 2 is presented. The new method was developed alongside classical tracer methods (stable water isotopes, 222 Rn, 3 H/ 3 He) in a highly instrumented boreal catchment. By revealing (noble gas) recharge temperatures and excess air, dissolved gases allow (i) the contribution of snowmelt to recharge, (ii) the temporal recharge dynamics, and (iii) the primary recharge pathways to be identified. In contrast to stable water isotopes, which produced highly inconsistent snowmelt recharge estimates for the experimental catchment, dissolved gases produced consistent estimates even when the temperature of snowmelt during recharge was not precisely known. As dissolved gases are not controlled by the same processes as stable water isotopes, they are not prone to the same biases and represent a highly complementary tracer method for the quantification of snowmelt recharge dynamics in snow‐dominated regions. Furthermore, an observed systematic depletion of N 2 in groundwater provides new evidence for the pathways of biological N‐fixation in boreal forest soils.
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Snowmelt in early spring is one cause of slope failure and landslides in snowy regions. The infiltration of meltwater into a cut slope along an expressway plays a critical role in reducing resistance to sliding. Despite its significant impact on snowmelt-induced slope failure, snowmelt runoff process has not been addressed in most specifications. This paper examines the case of a recent cut slope failure in the Hokkaido Expressway in the snowmelt season, and describes how snow melts and how meltwater infiltrates the ground to destabilize the cut slope. Snowmelt runoff tests were conducted both inside and outside of the laboratory and these tests focused on the fact that when a small snow block melts, meltwater drips only from the lowest part of the block. As part of the tests, snow blocks were placed on two slopes made of sandy soil. While one slope was completely covered with snow blocks, the other slope was covered on the upper part. As the result of the tests in the former case, meltwater moved downslope and flowed out from the snow layer, leaving the soil slope in a sound condition. In the latter case, meltwater flowing out of the lowest part of the snow layer infiltrated into sandy soil, resulting in a failure. The paper discusses how snowmelt processes similar to those observed in the laboratory tests can be seen on natural slopes. Since the site of the expressway cut-slope failure is located at the lower end of a snow-covered area of an expressway cut slope, it can be inferred that phenomena similar to those observed in the laboratory occurred at the slope failure site.
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Water table level is an important feature in subterranean hydrology and is relatively easy to observe. Groundwater recharge is a cause of water table rise and the carrier of contaminants to groundwater. However, groundwater recharge is an elusive quantity because accurate field measurements are difficult to obtain. A study of the relationship between groundwater recharge and water table rise is advantageous because it will allow the evaluation of groundwater recharge based on field-measured water table rise.
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In order to investigate the concentration levels and chemodynamic behaviour of organic micropollutants and heavy metals in snowmelt runoff from urban sealed surfaces, meltwater was sampled from one street :and four different roof catchments. Apart from peak concentrations of suspended solids during short intense street runoff from rain, concentrations of suspended solids in snowmelt runoff are two to fivefold higher than in rain runoff. However, the specific metal concentrations in suspended solids of snowmelt (except Zn) are lower than in suspended solids of rainwater runoff. This partly compensates the higher concentration of suspended solids. There are no distinct differences in concentrations of heavy metals between rain and meltwater runoff willi the exception of dissolved Cd; its concentrations are increased when high concentrations of macro ions are present. We explain high concentrations of PAH with a molecular weight of 202 or less in snowmelt with longer equilibration times available during melting than during rain runoff. An enhancement of solubility by DOC seems to be likely. The physical and chemical properties of various roof surfaces greatly influence the temporal variation of PAH concentrations during snowmelt runoff.
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<p>Meltwater from seasonal snow provides a substantial amount of runoff to many of the rivers that originate in the high mountains of Asia, yet the importance of snow in the region as streamflow component, its changes over the past decades, and its sensitivity to future climatic changes are relatively unknown. To understand future changes in the water supply to the millions of people living downstream, a better understanding of snow dynamics at large scale is key. Using a novel snow model, forced by ERA5 climate reanalysis and calibrated by MODIS remote sensing observations, we generate daily snow water equivalent output at 0.05&#176; resolution covering all major river basins in Asia. We show that between 1979 and 2018 significant and spatially variable changes have occurred in snow meltwater availability and its timing, with melt peaks attenuating and/or advancing in time, and snowmelt seasons shortening. Additionally, our results reveal that snowmelt is a much more important contributor to streamflow than glacier melt in many of Asia's large river basins. In a bottom-up elasticity analysis we project strong changes in snowmelt in the future under changing temperature and precipitation. Sensitivity of snowmelt to climate change varies among basins, however, and actual losses are strongly dependent on the degree of future climate change. Limiting climate change in the current century is therefore crucial in order to sustain the role of seasonal snow packs in Asia&#8217;s water supply.</p>
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The water table fluctuation method for determining recharge from precipitation and water table measurements was originally developed on an event basis. Here a new multievent time series approach is presented for inferring groundwater recharge from long‐term water table and precipitation records. Additional new features are the incorporation of a variable specific yield based upon the soil moisture retention curve, proper accounting for the Lisse effect on the water table, and the incorporation of aquifer drainage so that recharge can be detected even if the water table does not rise. A methodology for filtering noise and non‐rainfall‐related water table fluctuations is also presented. The model has been applied to 2 years of field data collected in the Tomago sand beds near Newcastle, Australia. It is shown that gross recharge estimates are very sensitive to time step size and specific yield. Properly accounting for the Lisse effect is also important to determining recharge.
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Depression-focused recharge
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