Offsetting Streamflow Depletion from Well Pumpage by Capture of Evapotranspiration

Abstract:

It is well established that groundwater pumpage must be balanced by a loss of water elsewhere. This loss comes primarily from storage depletion at early times and increasingly from capture at later times. Capture includes some combination of increases in recharge to the aquifer and decreases in discharge from the aquifer induced by the pumpage. Most capture is manifested as streamflow depletion (e.g., through induced infiltration and/or reductions in baseflow). However, decreasing evapotransirative discharge from an aquifer would constitute a type of capture that does not affect streamflow. In his classic 1940 paper Theis recommends that wells be placed in areas where groundwater “is being lost by evaporation or transpiration by non-productive vegetation,” thereby utilizing this “lost” water with a minimal lowering of the water table. This study uses numerical simulation of a hypothetical unconfined stream-aquifer system in an arid climate, where streamflow depletion is typically a major concern, to assess how capture of evapotranspiration (ET) can influence the sources of water for a pumping well when the ET losses are directly affected by spatial and temporal changes in the depth to the water table. Consequently, streamflow depletion for a given pumping rate can be affected by capture of ET and how that varies with well location and the history of development and drawdown. We assume the standard MODFLOW linear model for changes in groundwater ET as the water table declines to a specified extinction depth. In one scenario in which about half the recharge to the aquifer is lost to ET under predevelopment conditions, the percentage of well discharge balanced by decreased ET changed from 1.1% after one year to 18% after 200 years of simulated pumpage. The actual ET rate decreased from 5,372 m³/d under predevelopment conditions to 5,001 m³/d after 200 years of development (a 7% reduction in total ET losses). At this same time, 77% of pumpage is derived from streamflow depletion, which can be contrasted with an equivalent scenario in which there is no ET; in that case 94% of pumpage is derived from streamflow depletion after 200 years. Recognition of the potential contribution of captured ET to balance well pumpage should help efforts to optimize groundwater development in shallow aquifer systems.