Simulation of Surface Water and Groundwater Interaction for a Grassland Catchment in Valdai, Russia

In this paper, the framework developed by Liang and Xie [2002] that represents dynamically the interactions of surface and groundwater in the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) land surface model is applied to the Usadievskiy watershed, Valdai, Russia. The Usadievskiy watershed is a good test site due to its multiple measurements on water fluxes provided by the Project for Intercomparison of Landsurface Parameterization Schemes (PILPS) Phase 2(d). The VIC simulated groundwater table, surface runoff, snow cover, evaporation, and soil moisture are compared with the Valdai observations. Results show that the simulations of groundwater table match the observations fairly well, especially in the summer when the flux boundary condition is reasonably represented. Also, VIC simulations on evaporation, runoff, and soil moisture compare well with the observations. Comparisons between VIC simulations with and without considering the dynamics of surface and groundwater interactions will also be conducted to study the impact of such interactions on components of the water budget. References: Liang, X., and Z. Xie, Important factors in land-atmosphere interactions: surface runoff generations and interactions between surface and groundwater, Global and Planetary Change, accepted, 2002.