The role of groundwater in storm runoff

Abstract

Groundwater plays a much more active, responsive and significant role in the generation, of storm and snow-melt runoff in streams than the recent literature on the subject suggests. Basin-wide trace experiments using environmental isotopes ( 18O, deuterium, tritium) and hydrometric studies carried out in hydrogeologically diverse watersheds, indicate that for all except the most intense rain storms and the most prolific melting days, groundwater dominates the runoff hydrographs in the study basins. The increased groundwater discharge during runoff events is apparently related to a rapid rise in hydraulic head along the perimeter of transient and perennial discharge areas. This groundwater ridging phenomenon probably arises from the almost instantaneous conversion of the near-surface tension-saturated capillary fringe into phreatic water. The ridging precedes, and is apparently independent of the response of the rest of the basin. In addition to its compatibility with several of the field observations commonly associated with contemporary concepts of runoff generation, the groundwater discharge theory explains some of the temporal variations in stream water chemistry which are not adequately accounted for by other theories.