Impacts of massive pumping on flood processes in polders—with a case study on Lannihu basin in the Dongting Lake District, China

Abstract

AbstractFlooding risk in polders is dictated by not only rainfall, topography, and land use, but also massive pumping. Unfortunately, existing models are inadequate for resolving floods as water transfer due to pumping is insufficiently accounted for. Here an improved hydrological model (MGB‐MP) is proposed under the framework of the large‐scale hydrological model (MGB) based on the principle of water balance, explicitly incorporating massive pumping within a polder and also out to external rivers. The proposed model is calibrated and validated for the Lannihu basin, a typical polder with an area of 1353 km2 and 126 pumping stations in the Dongting Lake District, China and surrounded by Xiangjiang River and Zishui River. The model performs fairly well, with Nash‐Sutcliffe efficiencies concerning water levels over 0.76 for the calibration and over 0.73 for the validation. The model is applied to the Lannihu basin under different pumping station settings and rainfall scenarios to unravel how and to what extent massive pumping affects the flood processes as characterized by water levels and discharge hydrographs. It is shown that massive pumping considerably alters the discharge hydrographs and accordingly leads to substantial decrease in the water levels of rivers, which are independent unit‐polders, due to water transfer between unit‐polders within the basin and out of the basin. The closer the unit‐polders are to pumping stations, the more the water levels in unit‐polders decrease. The water levels in unit‐polders away from a pumping station is affected by the pumping station capacity to a greater extent than the pumping station's threshold water level for initiating pumping.