The great majority of Southern African aquifers depend on rainfall for their recharge. The accurate estimation of recharge remains one of the biggest challenges for groundwater investigators. Accurate recharge estimations are needed for proper groundwater management as this governs the estimation of sustainable exploitation. Current estimates of recharge to aquifers range between 0.2 and 3% of ...

Parametric studies were carried out to analyse the effect on sea water intrusion of freshwater recharge through a finite width strip parallel to the coast. A vertically integrated one-dimensional finite element model was used for this purpose. The studies included the analysis of the effect of location, width, intensity and the period of recharge on sea water-freshwater interface motion. Relati...

[1] Significant variations in interannual and decadal recharge rates are likely in alluvial basins of the semiarid southwestern United States on the basis of decadal variations in climate and precipitation and correlation of El Niño with high rates of winter precipitation and streamflow. A better understanding of the magnitude of recharge variations in semiarid and arid regions would reduce wat...

Playas are ephemeral, closed-basin wetlands that are hypothesized as an important source of recharge to the High Plains aquifer in central USA. The ephemeral nature of playas, low regional recharge rates, and a strong reliance on groundwater from the High Plains aquifer has prompted many questions regarding the contribution and quality of recharge from playas to the High Plains aquifer. As a re...

Monthly evapotranspiration (ET) rates (2000 to 2009) across Nebraska at about 1-km resolution were obtained by linear transformations of the MODIS (MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) daytime surface temperature values with the help of the Priestley-Taylor equation and the complementary relationship of evaporation. For positive values of the mean annual precipitation and ET differenc...

[1] The responses of karstic aquifers to storms are often used to obtain information about aquifer geometry. In general, spring hydrographs are a function of both system geometry and recharge. However, the majority of prior work on storm pulses through karst has not studied the effect of recharge on spring hydrographs. To examine the relative importance of geometry and recharge, we break karsti...

Numerical simulations of water ̄ow and solute transport were used to investigate the e€ect of the recharge (rain/irrigation) at the soil surface on solute spreading and breakthrough in a realistic, three-dimensional, heterogeneous, vadose zone±groundwater ̄ow system. Results of the analyses suggest that smaller recharge at the soil surface increases the relative variability in the response of t...

In this study, abstraction, desalination and recharge method and SEAWAT numerical model are used to investigate seawater intrusion repulsion in a hypothetical two-dimensional coastal aquifer to understand the relation of seawater intrusion with abstraction, desalination and recharge parameters (i.e. abstraction/recharge rate, wells distance and depth). Abstraction, desalination and recharge con...

As a widely used groundwater flow model, MODFLOW offers a set of packages to simulate hydrologic stresses, inflows and outflows, to a groundwater system. Specifically, MODFLOW lacks a general method to process areally distributed recharge and discharge to groundwater. One solution would be to create a new package for MODFLOW. Alternatively, it is also possible to make the best use of existing c...

Soil and vadose zone profiles are used as an archive of changes in groundwater recharge and water quality following changes in land use in an area of the Loess Plateau of China. A typical rain-fed loess-terrace agriculture region in Hequan, Guyuan, is taken as an example, and multiple tracers (chloride mass balance, stable isotopes, tritium and water chemistry) are used to examine groundwater r...