HR: 08:00h
AN: H41H-01 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Representativity and Challenges in the Simulation of Subsurface Flow at Hillslope and Subcatchment Scales: Case Studies from Quebec and Nova Scotia (Canada)
AU: * Paniconi, C
EM: claudio.paniconi@ete.inrs.ca
AF: INRS-ETE, Université du Québec, 490 Rue de la Couronne, Quebec City, G1K 9A9, Canada
AU: Broda, S
AF: Université du Québec à Montréal, 201 Avenue Kennedy, Montreal, H3C 3P8, Canada
AU: Gauthier, M
AF: INRS-ETE, Université du Québec, 490 Rue de la Couronne, Quebec City, G1K 9A9, Canada
AU: Guay, C
AF: INRS-ETE, Université du Québec, 490 Rue de la Couronne, Quebec City, G1K 9A9, Canada
AU: Larocque, M
AF: Université du Québec à Montréal, 201 Avenue Kennedy, Montreal, H3C 3P8, Canada
AU: Nastev, M
AF: Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, 490 Rue de la Couronne, Quebec City, G1K 9A9, Canada
AU: Rivard, C
AF: Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, 490 Rue de la Couronne, Quebec City, G1K 9A9, Canada
AB: Soil on sloping bedrock is a common conceptualization in hydrological modeling at the hillslope and subcatchment scales. At these small scales morphology, vegetation, and climate can all be quite accurately represented, whereas pedology and geology are much more difficult to characterize. Thus further approximations, reasoned or ad hoc, are often introduced concerning the prevailing direction(s) of flow, the (im)permeability of the soil-bedrock interface, the presence or absence of layering and other inhomogeneities in the soil and aquifer, the influence of the unsaturated zone, the degree of interaction between the land surface and the subsurface, and so on. We will examine the impact of some of these approximations using data and simulations of sloping aquifers from two study sites, the Thomas Brook subcatchment in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia and a hillslope in Havelock, part of the Chateauguay river basin in southwestern Quebec. Two models, one based on a discretization of the full (3D) Richards equation coupled to a path-based surface routing model, and the other based on the 1D Boussinesq equation for groundwater flow in unconfined aquifers, will be used to assess groundwater recharge, saturation behavior at the land surface, soil water dynamics, and other variables in response to different representations of the soil and geology. Reliable estimation of two variables in particular, leakage/recharge and soil moisture/soil water storage, is critical to integrated water resources management, and combined use of data and models is crucial to achieving this task. These examples underline the point that accurate, inexpensive, and rapid noninvasive hydrogeophysical characterization of the subsurface on a hillslope or small catchment can contribute to important advances in hydrological simulation at these scales.
DE: 1805 Computational hydrology
DE: 1829 Groundwater hydrology
DE: 1830 Groundwater/surface water interaction
DE: 1835 Hydrogeophysics
DE: 1847 Modeling
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting