Assessing distributed groundwater recharge rate using integrated surface water-groundwater modelling: application to Mihocheon watershed, South Korea

A method of estimating groundwater recharge, based on water-balance components using the SWAT-MODFLOW model (an integrated surface water-groundwater model), is described. A multi-reservoir storage routing module is suggested instead of a single storage routing module in SWAT; this represents a more realistic delay in the travel of water through the vadose zone. By using this module, the parameter related to the delay time can be optimized by checking the correlation between simulated recharge and observed groundwater levels. The final step of this procedure is to compare simulated groundwater levels as well as the simulated watershed stream flow with the observed groundwater levels and watershed stream flow. This method is applied to the Mihocheon watershed in South Korea to estimate spatio-temporal groundwater recharge distribution. The computed annual recharge rate is compared with the independently estimated recharge rate using BFLOW. The hydrologic modelling results show that the annual average recharge rate should be estimated by a long-term continuous simulation with a distributed hydrologic modelling technique.