Este trabalho teve por objetivos quantificar a evaporação da água na superfície do solo, em plantio direto e em preparo convencional, e avaliar o uso de microlisímetros de pesagem para medir esse processo. As medições foram feitas em campo, nos verões de 2001/2002, 2002/2003 e 2004/2005, em experimentos irrigados e não irrigados. Utilizaram-se delineamentos inteiramente casualizados, com quatro repetições, cujos tratamentos consistiram de sistemas de manejo do solo – plantio direto e preparo convencional –, e a presença ou ausência de cultivo de milho. Mediu-se a evaporação diária durante períodos de secagem do solo, entre precipitações ou irrigações consecutivas. Em experimentos sem irrigação, a evaporação acumulada foi maior sob plantio direto, na maioria dos períodos de medição, independentemente da presença da lavoura de milho. Nos experimentos com irrigação, a evaporação não apresentou diferenças regulares entre sistemas de manejo de solo. Normalmente, no início dos períodos de medição, com dois a cinco dias de secagem do solo, a evaporação foi maior em solo sob preparo convencional, tendo-se tornado maior em plantio direto, no restante do período de secagem. O emprego de microlisímetros de pesagem é eficiente para medir a evaporação na superfície do solo. | This work aimed to quantify the evaporation of water on the soil surface under no‑tillage and conventional tillage systems, and to evaluate the microlysimeters use to measure this process. Measurements were performed in the field, during the summers of 2001/2002, 2002/2003 and 2004/2005, in experiments with and without irrigation. Completely randomized designs were used, with four repetitions. The treatments consisted of no‑tillage and conventional soil tillage systems, in the presence or absence of corn cultivation. Evaporation was measured daily, during drying periods between precipitations and consecutive irrigations. Without irrigation, accumulated evaporation was greater under no tillage system, in most measuring periods, irrespective of the presence of corn cultivation. In experiments with irrigation, evaporation was similar in both types of soil management systems. Normally, at the beginning of the measurement periods, within two to five days of drying, evaporation was higher in soil under conventional tillage and, subsequently, it became greater in soils under no tillage system. The use of microlysimeters proved to be efficient to measure the evaporation at the soil surface.

Este trabalho teve por objetivos quantificar a evaporação da água na superfície do solo, em plantio direto e em preparo convencional, e avaliar o uso de microlisímetros de pesagem para medir esse processo. As medições foram feitas em campo, nos verões de 2001/2002, 2002/2003 e 2004/2005, em experimentos irrigados e não irrigados. Utilizaram-se delineamentos inteiramente casualizados, com quatro repetições, cujos tratamentos consistiram de sistemas de manejo do solo – plantio direto e preparo convencional –, e a presença ou ausência de cultivo de milho. Mediu-se a evaporação diária durante períodos de secagem do solo, entre precipitações ou irrigações consecutivas. Em experimentos sem irrigação, a evaporação acumulada foi maior sob plantio direto, na maioria dos períodos de medição, independentemente da presença da lavoura de milho. Nos experimentos com irrigação, a evaporação não apresentou diferenças regulares entre sistemas de manejo de solo. Normalmente, no início dos períodos de medição, com dois a cinco dias de secagem do solo, a evaporação foi maior em solo sob preparo convencional, tendo-se tornado maior em plantio direto, no restante do período de secagem. O emprego de microlisímetros de pesagem é eficiente para medir a evaporação na superfície do solo.<br>This work aimed to quantify the evaporation of water on the soil surface under no-tillage and conventional tillage systems, and to evaluate the microlysimeters use to measure this process. Measurements were performed in the field, during the summers of 2001/2002, 2002/2003 and 2004/2005, in experiments with and without irrigation. Completely randomized designs were used, with four repetitions. The treatments consisted of no-tillage and conventional soil tillage systems, in the presence or absence of corn cultivation. Evaporation was measured daily, during drying periods between precipitations and consecutive irrigations. Without irrigation, accumulated evaporation was greater under no tillage system, in most measuring periods, irrespective of the presence of corn cultivation. In experiments with irrigation, evaporation was similar in both types of soil management systems. Normally, at the beginning of the measurement periods, within two to five days of drying, evaporation was higher in soil under conventional tillage and, subsequently, it became greater in soils under no tillage system. The use of microlysimeters proved to be efficient to measure the evaporation at the soil surface.

A groundwater flow model of the Alpine valley aquifer in the Aosta Plain (NW Italy) showed that well pumping can induce river streamflow depletions as a function of well location. Analysis of the water budget showed that ∼80% of the water pumped during 2 years by a selected well in the downstream area comes from the baseflow of the main river discharge. Alluvial aquifers hosted in Alpine valleys fall within a particular hydrogeological context where groundwater/surface-water relationships change from upstream to downstream as well as seasonally. A transient groundwater model using MODFLOW2005 and the Streamflow-Routing (SFR2) Package is here presented, aimed at investigating water exchanges between the main regional river (Dora Baltea River, a left-hand tributary of the Po River), its tributaries and the underlying shallow aquifer, which is affected by seasonal oscillations. The three-dimensional distribution of the hydraulic conductivity of the aquifer was obtained by means of a specific coding system within the database TANGRAM. Both head and flux targets were used to perform the model calibration using PEST. Results showed that the fluctuations of the water table play an important role in groundwater/surface-water interconnections. In upstream areas, groundwater is recharged by water leaking through the riverbed and the well abstraction component of the water budget changes as a function of the hydraulic conditions of the aquifer. In downstream areas, groundwater is drained by the river and most of the water pumped by wells comes from the base flow component of the river discharge.

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is widely acknowledged as a key driver of environmental change in tropical island coral reefs. Previous work has addressed SGD and groundwater-reef interactions at isolated submarine springs; however, there are still many outstanding questions about the mechanisms and distribution of groundwater discharge to reefs. To understand how groundwater migrates to reefs, a series of offshore ²²²Rn (radon) and submarine electrical resistivity (ER) surveys were performed on the tropical volcanic island of Mo’orea, French Polynesia. These surveys suggest that fresher water underlies the fringing reef, apparently confined by a <1-m-thick low-permeability layer referred to as a reef flat plate. Reef flat plates have been documented elsewhere in tropical reefs as thin, laterally continuous limestone units that form through the super-saturation of calcium carbonate in the overlying marine waters. In other tropical reefs, the reef flat plate is underlain by a highly permeable karstic limestone formation, but the submarine reef geology on Mo’orea is still uncertain. Numerical modeling of two-dimensional reef transects and SGD quantifications, based on water budget and radon/salinity mass balance, support the confining nature of the reef flat plates and indicate important implications for SGD impacts to tropical reefs. Except where incised by streams or local springs, reef flat plates may route SGD to lagoons or to the reef crest 100s of meters offshore. Because groundwater can transport pollutants, nutrients, and low pH waters, the reef flat plate may play an important role in the spatial patterns of reef ecology and coastal acidification.

Shenzhen is the major financial and high-tech center in southern China. The megacity has grown rapidly in the last 40 years with the population increasing from about 30,000 in 1979 to 20 million in 2016. The study area (2,015 km²) is about 42% urban and 58% undeveloped land. The rapid development of the megacity has resulted in severe degradation of the groundwater and surface-water resources and has created a nearly insatiable demand for water, with an average consumption of 2000 × 10⁶ m³/year. Groundwater is an important component of the baseflow of the many streams in the area and is used for potable water supply and irrigation in some of the rural parts of the municipality. This study develops a conceptual model and quantitative framework for assessing the groundwater resources of Shenzhen. The groundwater system consists of shallow aquifers of alluvium and weathered bedrock overlying low permeability igneous and sedimentary rocks. The complex geologic setting was conceptualized as a block structure with blocks bounded by high-angle faults. The water budget in Shenzhen was quantified. The estimated average groundwater discharge is about 12% of annual precipitation. The study provides a starting point to investigate how a megacity such as Shenzhen should manage and protect its groundwater as a strategic resource and environmental asset. It is also a basic management tool for analyzing and contributing to urban drainage concepts such as the “sponge city”.

The feasibility of a hydrogeological modeling approach to simulate several thousand shallow groundwater-fed lakes and wetlands without explicitly considering their connection with groundwater is investigated at the regional scale (~40,000 km²) through an application in the semi-arid Nebraska Sand Hills (NSH), USA. Hydraulic heads are compared to local land-surface elevations from a digital elevation model (DEM) within a geographic information system to assess locations of lakes and wetlands. The water bodies are inferred where hydraulic heads exceed, or are above a certain depth below, the land surface. Numbers of lakes and/or wetlands are determined via image cluster analysis applied to the same 30-m grid as the DEM after interpolating both simulated and estimated heads. The regional water-table map was used for groundwater model calibration, considering MODIS-based net groundwater recharge data. Resulting values of simulated total baseflow to interior streams are within 1% of observed values. Locations, areas, and numbers of simulated lakes and wetlands are compared with Landsat 2005 survey data and with areas of lakes from a 1979–1980 Landsat survey and the National Hydrography Dataset. This simplified process-based modeling approach avoids the need for field-based morphology or water-budget data from individual lakes or wetlands, or determination of lake-groundwater exchanges, yet it reproduces observed lake-wetland characteristics at regional groundwater management scales. A better understanding of the NSH hydrogeology is attained, and the approach shows promise for use in simulations of groundwater-fed lake and wetland characteristics in other large groundwater systems.

Groundwater pumping and changes in climate-induced recharge lead to lower groundwater levels and significant changes in the water balance of a catchment. Water previously discharged as evapotranspiration can become a source of pumpage. Neglecting this effect leads to overestimated streamflow depletion. A small river basin (Sudogda River Basin, Russia) with a boreal climate and with long-term records of groundwater head and streamflow rate (showing that the measured stream depletion is less than the pumping rate) was investigated. The role of evapotranspiration in the water balance was analyzed by a hydrogeological model using MODFLOW-2005 with the STR package; the annual variation in recharge was obtained with the codes Surfbal and HYDRUS. The Sudogda River Basin was classified according to landscape and unsaturated-zone texture classes, and for each classified zone, the unsaturated-zone flow simulation was used to calculate the annual recharge dynamics for the observation period. Calibration of the regional flow model was conducted using flow and head observations jointly for two steady-state flow conditions—natural (before pumping started) and stressed (pumping). The simulations showed that pumped water originates from three sources: intercepted baseflow (75% of the annual total pumping rate), the capture of groundwater evapotranspiration discharge plus increased groundwater recharge (17%), and induced stream infiltration (8%). Additionally, multi-year precipitation records were analyzed to detect any long-term recharge and pumping water-budget changes. The results showed that increasing groundwater recharge by natural precipitation leads to (1) decreased intercepted baseflow and induced streamflow infiltration and (2) increased intercepted evapotranspiration discharge, thereby reducing stream depletion.

The determination of space–time variation in groundwater accumulation in Colombia’s Eastern Llanos foreland basin from 2003 to 2014 was done using terrestrial water storage (TWS) anomalies identified in two versions of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data—from the Global Data Center for Space Research (CSR) at the University of Texas at Austin (USA) and from the Institute of Geodesy at the Graz University of Technology (ITSG, Austria)—and also soil moisture storage (SMS) data from the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS). These data were compared to changes in groundwater storage obtained using the water-budget equation, calculated based on recorded data from hydrometeorological stations. This study confirmed the viability of using satellite information to understand and monitor temporal variation in groundwater recharge in the study area. Temporal variations in TWS, SMS, and groundwater level were shown to correspond to regional rain and drought periods, which are sensitive to climate phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña. Comparing changes in TWS and groundwater level to changes in infiltration and recharge revealed correlation coefficients of 0.56 and 0.98 with CSR data and 0.71 and 0.86 with ITSG data, respectively.