Abstract
Air entrapment is an important consideration in environments with shallow water tables and sandy soil, like the condition of highly conductive sandy soils and flat topography in Florida, USA. It causes water table rises in soils, which are significantly faster and higher than those in soils without air entrapment. Two numerical models, Integrated Hydrologic Model (IHM) and HYDRUS-1D (a single-phase, one-dimensional Richards’ equation model) were tested at an area of west central Florida to help further understanding the shallow water table behavior during a long term air entrapment. This investigation employed field data with two modeling approaches to quantify the variation of air pressurization values. It was found that the air pressurization effect was responsible at time up to 40 cm of water table rise being recorded by the observation well for these two models. The values of air pressurization calculated from IHM and HYDRUS-1D match the previously published values. Results also indicated that the two numerical models did not consider air entrapment effect (as the predictive parameters remain uncertain) and thus results of depth to water table from these models did not compare to the observations for these selected periods. Incorporating air entrapment in prediction models is critical to reproduce shallow water table observations.
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Foundation item: Under the auspices of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 40901026), International Cooperation Project of Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2010DFA92400), Tampa Bay Water and South Florida Water Management District (TBW and SFWMD) Project
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Zhang, J., Gong, H., Ross, M.A. et al. Numerical modeling of shallow water table behavior with Lisse effect. Chin. Geogr. Sci. 21, 249–256 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11769-011-0462-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11769-011-0462-4