Groundwater-Surface Water Exchange in Agro-Urban River Basins as
Impacted by Climate Change
Abstract
Integrated management of surface water and groundwater is the key to
achieve sustainable water resources and secure water availability,
especially in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. With generally
scarce surface water resources, groundwater often is the primary source
of water supply in such regions, with significant groundwater-surface
water (GW/SW) interactions often occurring in irrigated regions. The
objective of this study is to quantify the variation in stream seepage
and groundwater discharge fluxes in an agro-urban river basin as
impacted by climate change. To achieve this goal, i) an integrated
hydrologic modeling code that accounts for groundwater and surface water
processes and exchanges in large regional-scale managed river basins is
developed for the South Platte River Basin (72,000
km2), Colorado, and ii) possible future impacts
imposed by climate change on surface water and groundwater exchange in a
basin-scale complex semi-arid region is assessed. The developed updated
version of SWAT-MODFLOW is forced with five different CMIP5 climate
models downscaled by Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs (MACA),
each for two climate scenarios, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5, for 1980-2100. The
projected GW/SW fluxes from 2000 through the end of the century are
presented in 4 different time intervals along the South Platte River and
its tributaries- current (2000-2020), near future (2021-2040),
mid-century (2041-2070), and end of the century (2071-2100) in dry
(February) and wet (May) months of the year. The changes in stream
seepage and groundwater discharge fluxes in dry and wet months of the
year follow different patterns, as groundwater discharge to streams
decreases during the dry months while the water table elevation
declines. Overall, under the most extreme climate condition groundwater
discharge will decrease by approximately 10% by 2100.