11 Urban Geochemistry and Hydrology

Thursday, 7 April 2022
2:45 PM - 5:30 PM
North Meeting Room 206

MODELING MEETS MIRROR LAKE: HOW HIGHLY URBANIZED AREAS INFLUENCE SURFACE WATER- GROUNDWATER INTERACTIONS

Paper number: 11-6
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 4:00 PM – 4:15 PM

Authors

Abstract

Water plays a vital role in sustaining life, and the availability/lack of it shapes how communities thrive and behave. As societies industrialize and urbanize, waterbodies for aesthetic purposes increase, and this may alter surface water-groundwater interactions. This study aims to look at the impacts of water use and management on a large university campus, Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio USA), at a treasured recreational lake and how it influences the groundwater system through groundwater modeling. Utilizing available topographic and climatological data along with ground-based water level measurements, we model seasonal changes in groundwater storage and lake-groundwater exchange by creating time-lapse simulations of lake-groundwater connections using MODFLOW 6. Preliminary model results agree reasonably well with observed heads. Discrepancies are likely due to complex geology and the presence of dense urban infrastructure like storm sewers that influence groundwater flow. The lake loses approximately 432 cubic meters of water to the aquifer daily (0.005m3/sec), and as a result, must be fed by a steady supply of new water. For context, these losses are equivalent to the daily domestic water needs of approximately 1755 college students. These results provide new insights into water resources on an urban campus and the complex surface water-groundwater interactions in heavily modified human spaces.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 54, No. 4

doi: 10.1130/abs/2022NC-374994

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