Integrated modeling of groundwater and surface water interactions in a manmade wetland

A manmade pilot wetland in south Florida, the Everglades Nutrient Removal (ENR) project, was modeled with a physics-based integrated approach using WASH123D (Yeh et al. 2006). Storm water is routed into the treatment wetland for phosphorus removal by plant and sediment uptake. It overlies a highly permeable surficial groundwater aquifer. Strong surface water and groundwater interactions are a key component of the hydrologic processes. The site has extensive field measurement and monitoring tools that provide point scale and distributed data on surface water levels, groundwater levels, and the physical range of hydraulic parameters and hydrologic fluxes. Previous hydrologic and hydrodynamic modeling studies have treated seepage losses empirically by some simple regression equations and, only surface water flows are modeled in detail. Several years of operational data are available and were used in model historical matching and validation. The validity of a diffusion wave approximation for two-dimensional overland flow (in the region with very flat topography) was also tested. The uniqueness of this modeling study is notable for (1) the point scale and distributed comparison of model results with observed data; (2) model parameters based on available field test data; and (3) water flows in the study area include two-dimensional overland flow, hydraulic structures/levees, three-dimensional subsurface flow and one-dimensional canal flow and their interactions. This study demonstrates the need and the utility of a physics-based modeling approach for strong surface water and groundwater interactions.