Journal
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
Volume 52, Issue 4, Pages 2647-2658Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1002/2015WR017154
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Funding
- project Third Rhone River Restoration
- Swiss Confederation
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Streambed conductance controls the interaction between surface and groundwater. However, the streambed conductance is often subject to transience. Directly measuring hydraulic properties in a river yields only point values, is time-consuming and therefore not suited to detect transience of physical properties. Here, we present a method to continuously monitor transience in streambed conductance. Input data are time series of stream stage and near stream hydraulic head. The method is based on the inversion of floodwave responses. The analytical model consists of three parameters: x, the distance between stream-bank and an observation well, a, the aquifer diffusivity, and a the retardation coefficient that is inversely proportional to the streambed conductance. Estimation of a is carried out over successive time steps in order to identify transience in streambed conductance. The method is tested using synthetic data and is applied to field data from the Rhoone River and its alluvial aquifer (Switzerland). The synthetic method demonstrated the robustness of the proposed methodology. Application of the method to the field data allowed identifying transience in streambed properties, following flood events in the Rhoone. This method requires transience in the surface water, and the river should not change its width significantly with a rising water level. If these conditions are fulfilled, this method allows for a rapid and effective identification of transience in streambed conductance.
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