Groundwater-Surface Water Interactions

Headwater streams have long been essentially considered as conduits for the downstream transport of water and solutes arising from different hydrological reservoirs of the catchment including ice, snow, and ground water. An alternative view is to look at streams as “part of the catchment’s downvalley and downgradient transport of water and solutes” (Bencala, 1993). From this perspective, water is transported through the catchment by overland, surface channel (i. e. streams), shallow and deep subsurface flow pathways. As water moves downvalley, streams and ground water continuously exchange water, nutrients, organic matter and organisms (Jones & Mulholland, 2000). Stream water infiltrates into the sediment at multiple locations along the valley corridor, travels for some distance in unconfined aquifers, mixes with ground water and then returns to the stream. Thus, streams and subsurface compartments of the catchment are integrated components of a single hydrological network, the function of which is to transport, transform, retain, and connect (Fisher, 1997). The contribution of different hydrological reservoirs to the flow of water within the catchment as well as the location, direction, and strength of groundwater-surface water exchanges also change over time (Malard et al., 2002). The seasonal shift in sources and flow paths of water is an essential feature of glaciated catchments that has profound implications on biogeochemical processes and biodiversity in streams (Milner et al., 2001).

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