Understanding groundwater behaviors and exchange dynamics in a linked catchment-floodplain-lake system

Groundwater and surface water are hydrologically interconnected systems that exhibit dynamic water, heat and mass exchanges. In this study, a conceptual framework was used to investigate groundwater behaviors and associated hydrological exchanges by combining field measurements, digital filtering and analytical approaches, exemplified by a linked catchment-floodplain-lake system (Poyang Lake, China). The results show that the hydrological regime for both groundwater and surface water exhibit a seasonal variability in the lake catchment. Topographically, the lake catchment can be divided into the mountainous baseflow, ungauged lateral groundwater and floodplain groundwater that contribute to the lake storage changes. Although groundwater flow is generally from the mountainous catchment to the lake floodplain areas due to topographic effects, precipitation provides an additional input for the shallow groundwater and is expected to enhance the groundwater dynamics in terms of spatially heterogeneous responses. The estimation indicates that about 40 % of the catchment river discharge may be coming from the mountainous baseflow (~290 × 10⁸ m³/yr) and discharged into the lake through a surface flow pathway. The ungauged groundwater-lake interaction shows the annual discharge volume is up to 10 × 10⁸ m³/yr and associated exchange fluxes tend to be stronger during spring-summer months (23-45 m³/s) than those of autumn-winter months (9-22 m³/s). Additionally, the floodplain groundwater-lake exchange (~9.5 × 10⁸ m³/yr) indicates that groundwater generally receives the lake water during summer months (mean flux = 110 m³/s) and discharges into the lake during other months (90 m³/s) through a subsurface pathway. This study highlights the importance of groundwater's contributions to the surface river-lake system in terms of the flux variability and different transport pathways. The outcomes of this work will benefit future water resources management and applications by providing a methodology for predicting the groundwater hydrology of large lake-catchment systems.