PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2011, Vol. 30 ›› Issue (11): 1345-1353.doi: 10.11820/dlkxjz.2011.11.003

• Original Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

A Coupled Surface-water/Groundwater Model for Haihe River Basin

WANG Zhonggen1, ZHU Xinjun1, LIWei2, LUO Yuzhou1,2, ZHANG Minghua1,2   

  1. 1. Key Laboratory ofWater Cycle & Related Land Surface Processes, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;
    2. Department of Land, Air andWater Resources, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA
  • Received:2010-07-01 Revised:2010-11-01 Online:2011-11-25 Published:2011-11-25

Abstract: The Haihe River Basin covers 318 200 km2 in northern China, consisting of mountains and plateaus in the north and west, and the North China Plain in the eastern and southern parts. With rapid population growth and economic development, the combined problems of water shortage and water contamination significantly constrain the sustainable development in this area. At present, severe over-exploitation of groundwater was observed in the Haihe River Basin, with about 2/3 of the water supply relying on groundwater. In order to strengthen the unified management of groundwater and surface water, we need to develop coupled hydrologic modeling of surface- and groundwater which provides essential technical supports in the management planning of the Haihe River Basin. This article discussed existing modeling structures for coupled surface water and groundwater simulations. Loose coupling of SWAT model (for surface water simulation) and MODFLOW (for groundwater simulation) was developed based on the consideration of management-oriented application and data availability. The results of model evaluation indicated that, the newly developed modeling framework, integrated with GIS platform, reasonably captured the spatiotemporal variability of the hydrological processes of the surface water and groundwater in the study area. This article built a coupled SWAT/MODFLOW model for the Haihe River Basin. For surface water simulation, the study area was divided into 283 sub-watersheds, and further into 2100 hydrologic response units (HRU) based on land use and soil maps. For groundwater simulation, grid system of 4 by 4 km2 was established for the 15 major lithologic regions. In a GIS-based platform, the groundwater grids were geo-referenced to corresponding overlying HRUs. The modeling results showed a good agreement with the measurements of surface water and groundwater during 1995-2004. Results of model evaluation indicated that the developed model could be a promising tool in watershed management planning under the context of global climate change and the“South-NorthWater Transfer Project”.

Key words: groundwater, Haihe River Basin, model coupling, surface water