Discharge variations of qanat near an ephemeral stream

Abstract

Ephemeral streams are the most important sources of groundwater recharge in arid and semi-arid regions of the world. To extract this replenishable water, most of the time, qanats are constructed parallel to the ephemeral streams. Analytical modeling of a stream-qanat system can provide an effective tool for managing such a system in a timely fashion and, thus, is commonly applied in the hydrological communities. However, the available analytical solutions of discharge variation of qanat only consider the distributed recharge from rainfall and cannot be used to investigate the effects of geometric parameters of stream and hydraulic parameters of aquifer on the discharge of qanat near an ephemeral stream. Thus, the goal of this work is to obtain a semi-analytical solution of qanat discharge due to recharge from an ephemeral stream of an arbitrary shape in a three-dimensional anisotropic homogeneous unconfined aquifer. The solution is obtained via Laplace and Fourier transformations along with the principle of superposition. The results of this study are presented in the form of qanat discharge-time curves. The influences of the qanat length, shape, and recharge distribution along the ephemeral stream are explored in great detail. The effects of the hydraulic parameters of the aquifer on the discharge of qanat are also investigated. The results of this study can be used to predict the discharge of qanat due to recharge from an ephemeral stream, to calculate the optimum length of a qanat for maximum extraction of the replenished water, to estimate the adequate recharge from the ephemeral stream and the hydraulic parameters of aquifer using the discharge data of qanat, among other applications.