Evapotranspiration depletes groundwater under warming over the contiguous United States

Condon, Laura E.; Atchley, A. L.; Maxwell, R. M.

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-14688-0

Cited by 228 publications

(128 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…The role of lateral groundwater flow in watershed dynamics has been demonstrated in prior studies (e.g., Sear et al ; Brouyère et al ; Kollet and Maxwell ; Decharme et al ; Flessa et al ; Miller et al ; Fang and Pomeroy 2016; Buto et al ). On a large‐scale, Condon and Maxwell () and Condon et al () demonstrated the close connections between lateral groundwater flow streamflow and evapotranspiration (ET) using an integrated groundwater surface water model. However, few have investigated the role of lateral groundwater flow specifically in mountain headwater domains.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating Groundwater‐Streamflow Connections in the Upper Colorado River Basin

Tran¹,

Zhang

Cohard

et al. 2020

Groundwater

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In mountain, snow driven catchments, snowmelt is supposed to be the primary contribution to river streamflows during spring. In these catchments the contribution of groundwater is not well documented because of the difficulty to monitor groundwater in such complex environment with deep aquifers. In this study we use an integrated hydrologic model to conduct numerical experiments that help quantify the effect of lateral groundwater flow on total annual and peak streamflow in predevelopment conditions. Our simulations focus on the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB; 2.8 × 10 5 km 2 ) a well-documented mountain catchment for which both streamflow and water table measurements are available for several important sub-basins. For the simulated water year, our results suggest an increase in peak flow of up to 57% when lateral groundwater flow processes are included-an unexpected result for flood conditions generally assumed independent of groundwater. Additionally, inclusion of lateral groundwater flow moderately improved the model match to observations. The correlation coefficient for mean annual flows improved from 0.84 for the no lateral groundwater flow simulation to 0.98 for the lateral groundwater flow one. Spatially we see more pronounced differences between lateral and no lateral groundwater flow cases in areas of the domain with steeper topography. We also found distinct differences in the magnitude and spatial distribution of streamflow changes with and without lateral groundwater flow between Upper Colorado River Sub-basins. A sensitivity test that scaled hydraulic conductivity over two orders of magnitude was conducted for the lateral groundwater flow simulations. These results show that the impact of lateral groundwater flow is as large or larger than an order of magnitude change in hydraulic conductivity. While our results focus on the UCRB, we feel that these simulations have relevance to other headwaters systems worldwide.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating Groundwater‐Streamflow Connections in the Upper Colorado River Basin

Tran¹,

Zhang

Cohard

et al. 2020

Groundwater

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“…The need to incorporate local to regional scale subsurface processes into hydrological modeling has become increasingly evident across landscapes (e.g., Condon et al, 2020; Gleeson et al, 2011; Jefferson et al, 2010; O'Sullivan, Linnansaari, et al, 2019; Schaller & Fan, 2009). The inclusion of metrics that capture subsurface processes in spatial statistical models may overcome complexities that appear to be arising from variable groundwater and topography relationships.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Topographic Resolution and Geologic Setting on Spatial Statistical River Temperature Models

O’Sullivan

Devito

Ogilvie

et al. 2020

Water Resources Research

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River temperature exerts a critical control on habitat for aquatic biota. As the climate warms in eastern Canada, threats to habitats of cold-water species will increase, underpinning the necessity to develop an understanding of landscape-scale, thermal regimes of flowing waters. We assessed the performance of spatial statistical network (SSN) models of river temperature using high-resolution thermal infrared imagery (0.6 m) and LiDAR (1 m) compared to NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM-30 m) topographic data and interrogate LiDAR derived fine-scale models (3 ha) to describe groundwater connectivity to surface waters in catchments with shallow overburden and varied bedrock geology. LiDAR improved model performance in a catchment underlain by a homogeneous, high hydraulic conductance bedrock (Cains River) but did not improve model performance in a catchment with heterogeneous bedrock and variable hydraulic conductance (North Pole Stream). We hypothesize that differences in bedrock conductance modified topographic controls on subsurface flows and discharge patterns to the rivers and thus produced the mixed performance of the SSN models. At finer scales, river reaches in steep valleys incising high conductance bedrock produced groundwater discharge, which was absent in incised valleys with low conductance bedrock. These findings indicate that while topography exerts an important control on landscape-scale hydrological processes, geologic setting is a similarly important influence on hydrological processes. We suggest the inclusion of a third dimension of spatial autocorrelation, representative of the vertical plane that captures the geologic setting, would broaden the geographic applicability of spatial statistical models for river temperature studies.

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“…Reliable estimates of subsurface travel time could inform plans regarding legacy contaminants, set reasonable expectations for the length of the legacy (Meals et al, 2010), or suggest areas that are vulnerable to legacies. Reasonable predictions of flow path depth would be useful for contaminant remediation and plume characterization, for understanding geochemical reactions, as reaction environments typically vary by depth, in assessing vulnerability of groundwater discharge‐based cold water habitat to climate change, and in understanding the vulnerability of surface water flows to anthropogenic influences like groundwater pumping and climate change (Barnes et al, 2018; Benz et al, 2017; Briggs et al, 2018; Condon et al, 2020; Kolbe et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improved Prediction of Management‐Relevant Groundwater Discharge Characteristics Throughout River Networks

Barclay

Starn

Briggs

et al. 2020

Water Resources Research

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Groundwater discharge zones connect aquifers to surface water, generating baseflow and serving as ecosystem control points across aquatic ecosystems. The influence of groundwater discharge on surface flow connectivity, fate and transport of contaminants and nutrients, and thermal habitat depends strongly on hydrologic characteristics such as the spatial distribution, age, and depth of source groundwater flow paths. Groundwater models have the potential to predict spatial discharge characteristics within river networks, but models are often not evaluated against these critical characteristics and model equifinality with respect to discharge processes is a known challenge. We quantify discharge characteristics across a suite of groundwater models with commonly used frameworks and calibration data. We developed a base model (MODFLOW-NWT) for a 1,570-km 2 watershed in the northeastern United States and varied the calibration data, control of river-aquifer exchange directionality, and resolution. Most models (n = 11 of 12) fit similarly to calibration metrics, but patterns in discharge location, flow path depth, and subsurface travel time varied substantially. We found (1) a 15% difference in the percent of discharge going to first-order streams, (2) threefold variations in flow path depth, and (3) sevenfold variations in the subsurface travel times among the models. We recalibrated three models using a synthetic discharge location data set. Calibration with discharge location data reduced differences in simulated discharge characteristics, suggesting an approach to improved equifinality based on widespread field-based mapping of discharge zones. Our work quantifying variation across common modeling approaches is an important step toward characterizing and improving predictions of groundwater discharge characteristics.

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Evapotranspiration depletes groundwater under warming over the contiguous United States

Cited by 228 publications

References 39 publications

Simulating Groundwater‐Streamflow Connections in the Upper Colorado River Basin

Simulating Groundwater‐Streamflow Connections in the Upper Colorado River Basin

Effects of Topographic Resolution and Geologic Setting on Spatial Statistical River Temperature Models

Improved Prediction of Management‐Relevant Groundwater Discharge Characteristics Throughout River Networks

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