Discretization Approach in Integrated Hydrologic Model for Surface and Groundwater Interaction

The commonly used discretization approaches for distributed hydrological models can be broadly categorized into four types,based on the nature of the discrete components:Regular Mesh,Triangular Irregular Networks(TINs),Representative Elementary Watershed(REWs) and Hydrologic Response Units(HRUs).In this paper,a new discretization approach for landforms that have similar hydrologic properties is developed and discussed here for the Integrated Hydrologic Model(IHM),a combining simulation of surface and groundwater processes,accounting for the interaction between the systems.The approach used in the IHM is to disaggregate basin parameters into discrete landforms that have similar hydrologic properties.These landforms may be impervious areas,related areas,areas with high or low clay or organic fractions,areas with significantly different depths-to-water-table,and areas with different types of land cover or different land uses.Incorporating discrete landforms within basins allows significant distributed parameter analysis,but requires an efficient computational structure.The IHM integration represents a new approach interpreting fluxes across the model interface and storages near the interface for transfer to the appropriate model component,accounting for the disparate discretization while rigidly maintaining mass conservation.The discretization approaches employed in IHM will provide some ideas and insights which are helpful to those researchers who have been working on the integrated models for surface-groundwater interaction.

Numerical Modeling of Shallow Water Table Behavior with Lisse Effect

Air entrapment is an important consideration in environments with shallow water tables and sandy soil, like the condition of highly conductive sandy soils and flat topography in Florida, USA. It causes water table rises in soils, which are significantly faster and higher than those in soils without air entrapment. Two numerical models, Integrated Hydrologic Model (IHM) and HYDRUS-1D (a single-phase, one-dimensional Richards′ equation model) were tested at an area of west central Florida to help further understanding the shallow water table behavior during a long term air entrapment. This investigation employed field data with two modeling approaches to quantify the variation of air pressurization values. It was found that the air pressurization effect was responsible at time up to 40 cm of water table rise being recorded by the observation well for these two models. The values of air pressurization calculated from IHM and HYDRUS-1D match the previously published values. Results also indicated that the two numerical models did not consider air entrapment effect (as the predictive parameters remain uncertain) and thus results of depth to water table from these models did not compare to the observations for these selected periods. Incorporating air entrapment in prediction models is critical to reproduce shallow water table observations.