COUPLING WETLANDS, SURFACE WATER AND GROUNDWATER THROUGH MATHEMATICAL MODELING

Valentin Zaharia

Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest – Faculty of Hydraulic Structures
Apa Nova Bucuresti, Bucharest, Romania

Abstract

Entire world corcerns more and more to improve, to maintain and to restore the wetlands. Because of the excessive urbanization and the need to have large agricultural areas, dewatering of the wetlands became inevitable in the second half of the 19th century and in the 20th century. Without awareness the environmental impact of these decisions, Romania took also the same measures. Models are simplifications of the reality, that will try to understand physical, chemical and biological processes and transpose them into mathematical relations. In the first steps, the designer of the model should establish the scale of the effort that he/she will be doing. It is necessary to take the first decisions about the future model: creating a 1D, 2D or a 3D model, the calculations will be done with analitical or numerical methods, the simulation will be done stady-state or transient. The mathematical relations between the future wetland, surface water and groundwater must be formulated. Normally, the rivers network and wetlands drain the hydrogeological basins but the exchange rate and intensity of these flows can vary in time. Infiltrations from the surface waters and the flows exchange between river and aquifer are important and influence the storage of the wetland.

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