Desktop Techniques for Analyzing Surface-Ground Water Interactions. The Reelfoot Lake Case Study
1988
McLaughlin, Dennis B.
This report is intended to illustrate how simple desktop analyses can be used to investigate complex hydrologic systems. Our discussion focuses on a case study of Reelfoot Lake, Tennessee, a shallow eutrophic lake which is plagued by a number of water quality problems. These problems are related, a least in part, to activities in the tributary watershed. The Reelfoot Lake watershed extends from an upland region which supplies most of the runoff, and probably most of the nutrients, entering the lake to a lowland region which was historically part of the Mississippi River flood plain. Levees, drainage projects, adn spillways have altered the watershed's hydrology and have complicated the lake's management. Since hydrologic data are limited and generally not very reliable, the processes which control the flow of water to and from the lake are not well understood. Some of the major questions about the region's hydrology need to be resolved before the agencies responsible for the lake can develop effective long-term management plans. The Reelfoot Lake case study offers a good opportunity to explore the advantages and disadvantages of simple desktop approaches to hydrologic analysis. We are particularly interested here in the way that desktop methods help reveal data gaps and uncertainties which tend to be obscured in more elaborate computer modeling studies. We are also interested in the qualitative conceptual issues that must be addressed in the beginning of any real-world hydrologic study, desk-top or computerized.
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