Modeling the hydrological behavior of a karst spring using a nonlinear reservoir-pipe model

Abstract

Karst aquifers are commonly simulated based on conceptual models. However, most karst conceptual models hardly consider the function of turbulent conduits. The conduit network acts as the main draining passage of the karst aquifer and may also have a strong influence on the hydrological processes, especially during storm events. A conceptual model with a nonlinear reservoir and a turbulent pipe (representing the conduit system) in series is proposed according to the basic structure of a typical karst aquifer, to simulate the karst spring. The model indicates whether the spring discharge is influenced by the turbulent pipe; this not only depends on the parameters of the nonlinear reservoir and turbulent pipe, but also depends on the volume of spring discharge itself. Even though the spring discharge is strongly influenced by the turbulent pipe during the storm, this influence decreases with the rainfall intensity and volume of spring discharge. In addition, an ‘evapotranspiration store’ is used to consider the moisture loss through evapotranspiration and to calculate the effective rainfall on the proposed model. Then, this simple conceptual model is used to simulate a karst spring (named S31) near Guilin city, China, with satisfactory results, especially with respect to discharge peaks and recession curves of the spring under storm conditions. The proposed model is also compared with the Vensim model of similar complexity, which has been applied to the same spring catchment. The comparison shows the superiority and better performance of the nonlinear reservoir-pipe model.