Abstract

Due to nonuniform rainfall distribution in Taiwan, groundwater is an important water source in certain areas that lack water storage facilities during periods of drought. Therefore, groundwater recharge is an important issue for sustainable water resources management. The mountainous areas and the alluvial fan areas of the Jhuoshui River basin in Central Taiwan are considered abundant groundwater recharge regions. This study aims to investigate the interactive mechanisms between surface water and groundwater through statistical techniques and estimate groundwater level variations by a combination of artificial intelligence techniques and the Gamma test (GT). The Jhuoshui River basin in Central Taiwan is selected as the study area. The results demonstrate that: (1) More days of accumulated rainfall data are required to affect variable groundwater levels in low-permeability wells or deep wells; (2) effective rainfall thresholds can be properly identified by lower bound screening of accumulated rainfall; (3) daily groundwater level variation can be estimated effectively by artificial neural networks (ANNs); and (4) it is difficult to build efficient models for low-permeability wells, and the accuracy and stability of models is worse in the proximal-fan areas than in the mountainous areas.

Highlights

  • Due to industrial and economic development along with rapid population growth in Taiwan in recent years, more water sources are required to satisfy the increasing water demands from the development of human civilization and livelihoods

  • This study investigates the interactive mechanism of groundwater level variations and precipitation in mountainous areas in the Jhuoshui River basin by using statistical methods

  • This study uses the Pearson correlation coefficient to investigate the relationship between the duration of accumulated rainfall (1–10 days) and the groundwater level variation

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Summary

Introduction

Due to industrial and economic development along with rapid population growth in Taiwan in recent years, more water sources are required to satisfy the increasing water demands from the development of human civilization and livelihoods. Due to its easy accessibility, low cost, and stable quality and temperature, groundwater is often considered an important water source. The interactive mechanism of groundwater level variations is rather complex and includes precipitation, tides, atmospheric pressure, and even earthquakes. Water 2019, 11, 1554 rainfall might vary widely in different regions. Taiwan, some research has suggested that time lags between rainfall and groundwater level variation might occur [8]. Chen [9] identified that different durations of rainfall affected groundwater levels and that response time spans range from a few hours to a few days

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