Die Bodenkultur - Journal for Land Management, Food and Environment

H. Holzmann:

Riverbed groundwater interaction – comparison of
several methods of groundwater recharge assessment

Summary

Surface and groundwater interaction can be considered as a pronounced temporal and spatial dynamic process. A case study at the Leitha river in Lower Austria aimed the assessment of the infiltration losses along the river reach. Among the different direct and indirect techniques that have been applied, the following will be discussed in more detail in the paper: (1) Continuous measurement of differential discharge along the course of interest, (2) local infiltration measurements by means of a riverbed lysimeter and (3) inverse groundwater modelling, where the infiltration boundary condition is regarded as the unknown variable. The comparisons of the particular results have been used to validate the magnitude of groundwater recharge and formed the base for a decision support tool to optimize the multi objective water release strategies. Key words: Riverbed infiltration, differential discharge measurements, riverbed lysimeter, inverse groundwater
modelling.