Abstract
A groundwater condition metric is presented and used to evaluate hydrologic changes in a regional population of wetlands in and around municipal well fields with large groundwater withdrawals. The approach compares a 26-year, monthly time series of groundwater potentiometric surfaces to light detection and ranging (LiDAR) land-surface elevations at 10,516 wetlands in a 1505-km2 area. Elevation differences between the potentiometric surface and the wetland land surface provide flow direction (upward or downward) and a proxy for vertical hydraulic-head difference in Darcy’s groundwater flow equation. The resulting metric quantifies the groundwater condition at a wetland through time as the potential for groundwater to discharge upward into a wetland or for water in a wetland to leak downward to recharge the underlying aquifer. The potential for wetland leakage across the regional wetland population decreased by 33% in the 13 years after cutbacks in groundwater withdrawals (2003 – 2015) compared to years before cutbacks (1990 – 2002). Inside well-field properties, wetland leakage potential decreased by 24%. In the wet season month of September, wetlands with the potential to receive groundwater discharge increased to 21.6% of the regional population after cutbacks compared to 13.3% before cutbacks. When mapped across regional drainage basins, discharging wetlands formed spatial connections, suggesting they play a critical role in generating streamflow.
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Data Availability
The data analyzed in this study is available at: http://www4.swfwmd.state.fl.us/downloads/WetlandGroundwaterConditions.zip
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Acknowledgments
We thank Tampa Bay Water for funding this research. Tampa Bay Water staff, Erin Hayes and Chris Shea, supplied helpful data and information on the study area. Warren Hogg managed the contract at Tampa Bay Water, and was instrumental in the funding process. The Southwest Florida Water Management District is kindly hosting the data generated by this work and prior projects that made this work possible. For that, we thank Margit Crowell and Axel Griner.
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The work presented here was conducted for a research contract funded by Tampa Bay Water.
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GF conducted the analysis, prepared the manuscript, and contributed to research design.
TML designed the research, contributed original drafts for parts of the manuscript, and supplied in-depth revisions to the manuscript.
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The authors received funding to perform this work from Tampa Bay Water, the regional water supplier responsible for groundwater withdrawals in well fields. This in no way shaped the results of this work.
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Fouad, G., Lee, T.M. A Spatially Distributed Groundwater Metric for Describing Hydrologic Changes in a Regional Population of Wetlands North of Tampa Bay, Florida, from 1990 to 2015. Wetlands 41, 103 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-021-01502-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-021-01502-w