Groundwater-surface water interactions: implications for water resources management

[摘要] This short paper provides a summary of the main findings from the 2012 Groundwater – Surface Water Interactions Workshop held at the Discovery Centre, Canberra, on 27-28 March 2012. The purpose of the workshop was to review progress made during the last decade in the measurement and modelling of groundwater – surface water processes, to evaluate how much progress has been achieved in implementing conjunctive water use policy into management and to discuss future directions for investigations and policy development.At a technical level, progress has been made to develop methods to both measure groundwater – surface water fluxes and incorporate these into both fully coupled and functionally linked models. Recent methodological developments include the use of heat and environmental tracers (especially radon-222 and helium-4) to quantify exchanges, especially for gaining river systems. However, quantifying fluxes at the scale of interest for management (regional) remains difficult. Fewer methods are available for losing river systems.A range of modelling approaches is now available to either study exchange processes or quantify them. However, because the time-scales involved are different, different models are often used for river management and operational purposes. New products are available on the market to address this shortcoming but uptake by practitioners remains slow, although there are some examples of fully coupled models at the catchment scale in most jurisdictions.The further development of advanced fully-coupled surface-groundwater models is an active area of research internationally. The design and implementation of monitoring networks dedicated to quantify groundwater – surface water interactions are among the key actions required to better support conjunctive water management in AustraliaWhile it is now well recognised in policy that groundwater and surface water must be managed as one resource, implementation through water management plans remains difficult. The traditional separation of groundwater and surface water assessment and management functions at the jurisdictional level is hindering progress in implementing integrated management provisions of the National Water Initiative. Better education of stakeholders is a key requirement. In the past this has been hindered by terminology which is not widely understood - development of a more accessible language connecting research, policy and implementation is important. Another key factor for stakeholder involvement is to more explicitly link conjunctive water use to the management of assets they value, such as groundwater-dependent ecosystems. A summary of other future research and policy development needs is provided.

[发布日期] 2012-08-17 [发布机构] CSIRO

[学科分类] 地球科学(综合)