TY - JOUR
T1 - History and evolution of seepage meters for quantifying flow between groundwater and surface water
T2 - Part 1 – Freshwater settings
AU - Rosenberry, Donald O.
AU - Duque, Carlos
AU - Lee, David R.
PY - 2020/5
Y1 - 2020/5
N2 - More than 75 years after its introduction, the seepage meter remains the only device for directly quantifying exchange across the sediment-water interface between groundwater and surface water. This device, first presented in the literature in the 1940s, has been in a state of near-constant improvement and design change, necessitating a review of the history and evolution of the device and a description of current best-measurement practices. Part 1 of this two-part review documents the evolution of seepage meters deployed in freshwater settings, including a listing of suggestions for best-measurement and deployment practices. Part 2 covers the same scope for seepage meters deployed in marine settings. Traditional seepage meters isolate a portion of the sediment bed; seepage commonly is determined by routing the volume of flow across that isolated interface to or from a submerged measurement bag over a known time interval. The time-integrated volume is then divided by the bed area covered by the meter to obtain a seepage flux expressed in distance per time. Both the instrument and the measurement are deceptively simple, leading some early users to question the viability of the measurement. Numerous sources of error have been identified and addressed over the decades, resulting in large improvements in measurement consistency and accuracy. Duration of each measurement depends on the seepage rate and can vary from minutes to days, leading to the erroneous and yet common assumption that seepage is relatively stable over time. Designs that replace the measurement bag with a flowmeter eliminate bag-related errors and provide much finer temporal resolution. Resulting data indicate seepage is highly variable in many settings and responds to numerous sub-daily processes, including evapotranspiration, rainfall, seiches and waves. Combining direct measurements from seepage meters with other measurements, such as vertical hydraulic gradients and vertical temperature profiles, provides far better understanding of the processes that control exchange between groundwater and surface water.
AB - More than 75 years after its introduction, the seepage meter remains the only device for directly quantifying exchange across the sediment-water interface between groundwater and surface water. This device, first presented in the literature in the 1940s, has been in a state of near-constant improvement and design change, necessitating a review of the history and evolution of the device and a description of current best-measurement practices. Part 1 of this two-part review documents the evolution of seepage meters deployed in freshwater settings, including a listing of suggestions for best-measurement and deployment practices. Part 2 covers the same scope for seepage meters deployed in marine settings. Traditional seepage meters isolate a portion of the sediment bed; seepage commonly is determined by routing the volume of flow across that isolated interface to or from a submerged measurement bag over a known time interval. The time-integrated volume is then divided by the bed area covered by the meter to obtain a seepage flux expressed in distance per time. Both the instrument and the measurement are deceptively simple, leading some early users to question the viability of the measurement. Numerous sources of error have been identified and addressed over the decades, resulting in large improvements in measurement consistency and accuracy. Duration of each measurement depends on the seepage rate and can vary from minutes to days, leading to the erroneous and yet common assumption that seepage is relatively stable over time. Designs that replace the measurement bag with a flowmeter eliminate bag-related errors and provide much finer temporal resolution. Resulting data indicate seepage is highly variable in many settings and responds to numerous sub-daily processes, including evapotranspiration, rainfall, seiches and waves. Combining direct measurements from seepage meters with other measurements, such as vertical hydraulic gradients and vertical temperature profiles, provides far better understanding of the processes that control exchange between groundwater and surface water.
KW - Groundwater-surface-water exchange
KW - Sediment-water interface
KW - Seepage
KW - Seepage meter
KW - TEMPORAL VARIABILITY
KW - NORTH-CAROLINA
KW - LAKE INTERACTIONS
KW - BAG TYPE
KW - PORE-WATER
KW - HYPORHEIC FLOW
KW - DISCHARGE
KW - STREAMBED HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY
KW - LITTORAL-ZONE
KW - EXCHANGE
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85082003162&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.earscirev.2020.103167
DO - 10.1016/j.earscirev.2020.103167
M3 - Review
AN - SCOPUS:85082003162
SN - 0012-8252
VL - 204
JO - Earth-Science Reviews
JF - Earth-Science Reviews
M1 - 103167
ER -