Groundwater Leakage and River Runoff in a Catchment Influenced by Tectonic Movement

Md Motaleb Hossain,Yasuhiro Ochiai,Takuto Miyamoto,Yoshitaka Sakata,Kazuhisa A Chikita

doi:10.4236/ojmh.2015.52004

Abstract

In order to clarify how groundwater leakage and river runoff occur in a catchment under tectonic movement, the water balance was estimated in the forested (88.3% in area) Oikamanai River cat- chment (area, 62.6 km 2 ), Hokkaido, Japan. The catchment's geology is early Miocene to Pliocene sedimentary bedrock of partly high permeability, accompanied by currently active faults. Daily evapotranspiration, E, in water balance was calculated by applying the one-layer model to meteo- rological data in the rainfall season of 2011 and 2012, with the topographic influence on heat bal- ance of the catchment considered. The coupling with the short-term water balance method for riv- er runoff events allows us to estimate groundwater leaking to the other catchments through the faults and bedrock. As a result, the leakage corresponded to 50% - 80% of effective rainfall (=P − E: P, rainfall) in 2011, whereas it was lower or negative in 2012. The estimate of leakage then in- cluded variability of ca. 80%. In 2012, shallow groundwater storage seems to retain high baseflow during non-rainfall.

Highlights

Focusing on the forest and land management and the water resource assessment on the time scale of one to 100How to cite this paper: Hossain, M.M., Chikita, K.A., Sakata, Y., Miyamoto, T. and Ochiai, Y. (2015) Groundwater Leakage and River Runoff in a Catchment Influenced by Tectonic Movement
Calculated shortwave radiation Kθ↓ onto the basin slope of θ = 34.66 ̊ and A = 356.6 ̊ was by 24% larger than the solar radiation K↓ at the Taiki Aerospace Research Field, and actual evapotranspiration increased by 33% and 30% in 2011 and 2012, respectively, compared with that from the K↓ values
The characteristics of discharge were specified in the geologically active and forested Oikamanai River catchment using data sets obtained in the rainfall season of 2011 and 2012, and the estimate of water balance for the catchment suggested that the groundwater leakage and storage changed inter-annually

Summary

Introduction

Focusing on the forest and land management and the water resource assessment on the time scale of one to 100How to cite this paper: Hossain, M.M., Chikita, K.A., Sakata, Y., Miyamoto, T. and Ochiai, Y. (2015) Groundwater Leakage and River Runoff in a Catchment Influenced by Tectonic Movement. Wang et al [5] investigated the dynamics of surface water leaking to groundwater, while Modica et al [6] and Sakata & Ikeda [7] explored the seepage of unconfined groundwater to river water on the scale of catchment or an alluvial fan. These studies are all related to water resource assessment on monthly to inter-annual basis. In such a geologically active catchment, it is unknown how rainfall or snowmelt runoff events are related to groundwater storage and leakage to deeper zone

Methods

Results

Conclusion