ABSTRACT
Water budgets are fundamental to the understanding of hydrologic systems. If the various components of the water budget can be quantified, including inflows, outflows, and changes in stored water, then a more complete understanding and evaluation of a hydrologic system becomes possible. In the New Jersey Pinelands area (Fig. 1), wetlands and aquatic habitats are supported by discharge from the Kirkwood – Cohansey aquifer system, and detailed water budgets of the area are needed in order to develop a quantitative understanding of aquifer-wetland-stream interactions at the watershed scale. As described by Rhodehamel [50], groundwater flow in the Pinelands is initiated as aquifer recharge, primarily in upland areas, and follows regional and local subsurface flow paths, with local flowpaths terminating asaquifer discharge to wetlands and streams.Temporal variations in recharge affect aquifer interactions with wetlands and streams, as demonstrated by investigations in the New Jersey Pinelands by Modica [41] and Walker et al. [66].Quantification of aquifer recharge on a seasonal basis, therefore, is needed to understand the dynamics of aquifer interactions with wetlands and streams.
