History and evolution of seepage meters for quantifying flow between groundwater and surface water: Part 1 – Freshwater settings

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 -