ABSTRACT
Groundwater and surface water have been managed as isolated components for a long time, but they are hydrologically connected in terms of both quantity and quality. Thus, a better understanding of the interactions between groundwater and surface water could provide crucial scientific insights for integrated management of water resources. In China, several studies have been conducted for quantifying interactions between groundwater and surface water in arid and semi-arid regions with tracer methods. An integrated approach that consists of multiple measuring methods has not yet been applied to investigate groundwater and surface-water interactions. Temperature gradient measurements beneath the streambed combined with the analytical or numerical heat transport model, can only estimate point groundwater discharges. The reliability of tracer methods for estimating groundwater and surface-water exchange was evaluated by Ge and Boufadel and Wagner and Harvey. They concluded that the stream tracer approach had minimal sensitivity to the surface-subsurface exchange at high baseflow conditions.
