Laboratory Validation of an Integrated Surface Water— Groundwater Model

The hydrodynamic surface water model DIVAST has been extended to include horizontally adjacent groundwater flows. This extended model is known as DIVAST-SG (Depth Integrated Velocities and Solute Transport with Surface Water and Groundwater). After development and analytical verification the model was tested against a novel laboratory set-up using open cell foam (60 pores per inch—ppi) as an idealised porous media representing a riverbank. The Hyder Hydraulics Laboratory at Cardiff University has a large tidal basin that was adapted to simulate a surface water—groundwater scenario using this foam, and used to validate the DIVAST-SG model. The properties of the laboratory set-up were measured and values were determined for hydraulic conductivity (permeability) and porosity, evaluated as 0.002 m/s and 75% respectively. Lessons learnt in this initial experimentation were used to modify the flume construction and improve the experimental procedure, with further experimentation being undertaken of both water level variations and tracer movement. Valuable data have been obtained from the laboratory experiments, allowing the validity of the numerical model to be assessed. Modifications to the input file to include representations of the joints between the foam blocks allowed a good fit between the observed and modelled water levels. Encouraging correlation was observed in tracer experiments using Rhodamine-WT dye between the observed exit points of the tracer from the foam, and the modelled exit points with time.

Diffuse Source Pollution Studies in a Physical Model of the Severn Estuary, UK

In recent years, there has been growing concern about the impact of diffuse source pollution on water bodies, particularly due to associated health risks. Coastal waters can receive considerable inputs of pollutants from catchments since they serve as sinks for many diffuse pollutants. Furthermore, bathing waters have in the recent past often failed to comply with the various standards set by different bathing water directives. The Severn estuary has recently attracted a lot of attention in terms of bathing water compliance due to its potential to generate a considerable amount of renewable energy for the UK. It is against this background that a physical model of the estuary has been set up in the Hydraulics Laboratory at Cardiff University, for studies to be undertaken to mimic the conditions of the prototype. A sandbox filled with non-cohesive sediments within the laboratory has been set up to investigate the behaviour of pollutants in propagating from the idealised groundwater environment into the estuarine waters. It has been demonstrated that for a semi-diurnal tidal estuary like the Severn, tides have a lesser effect on the transport of solutes than flows from the catchments. Thus the impact of pollution from diffuse sources to marine environments from catchments could be higher in less tidally dominated coastal waters than a tidal one.