Simulating River/Lake–Groundwater Exchanges in Arid River Basins: An Improvement Constrained by Lake Surface Area Dynamics and Evapotranspiration

Remote Sensing

Sergey Pozdniakov¹  Peter Vasilevskiy¹  Xuejing Zhang²  Ping Wang²  Jingjie Yu²  Yichi Zhang²  Tianye Wang³ 

[1]Department of Hydrogeology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, GSP-1, Leninskie Gory, Moscow 119899, Russia

[2]Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Related Land Surface Processes, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

[3]School of Water Conservancy Engineering, Zhengzhou University, 100 Science Avenue, Zhengzhou 450001, China

关键词: surface water–groundwater interaction;    evapotranspiration;    Heihe River;    terminal lake;    water balance;    remote sensing observations;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs14071657

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

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.

【 授权许可】

Unknown