• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
• /
• v.38 no.7 s.156
• /
• pp.517-526
• /
• 2005

In Korea, the methods of estimating groundwater recharge can categorized into two groups. One is baseflow separation method by means of groundurater recession curve, the other is water level fluctuation method by using the data from groundwater monitoring wells. Baseflow separation method is based on annual recharge and lumped concept, and water-table fluctuation method is largely dependent on monitoring wells rather than water budget in watershed. However, groundwater recharge rate shows the spatial-temporal variability due to climatic condition, land use and hydrogeological heterogeneity, these methods have various limits to deal with these characteristics. For this purpose, the method of estimating daily recharge rate with spatial variability based on distributed rainfall-runoff model is suggested in this study. Instead of representative recharge rate of large watershed, the subdivided recharge rate with heterogeneous characteristics can be computed in daily base. The estimated daily recharge rate is an advanced quantity reflecting the heterogeneity of hydrogeology, climatic condition, land use as well as physical behaviour of water in soil layers. Therefore, the newly suggested method could be expected to enhance existing methods.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.45 no.1
• /
• pp.72-84
• /
• 2024

Recently, the vulnerability of water resources has been increasing owing to climate change, highlighting the importance of groundwater. In particular, the Nakdong River Basin, located in the southern part of Korea, experiences frequent water scarcity phenomena, such as droughts. This study analyzed the hydrogeological characteristics of the study area by examining groundwater and stream water in the Gwangrye Stream, downstream of the Nakdong River Basin, in August and October 2023. Therefore, we collected samples from 54 groundwater wells and five streams for water quality analysis. The results of the field tests indicated an increasing trend in electrical conductivity from upstream to downstream in the study area. Laboratory analyses confirmed that the concentration of Na increased from upstream to downstream more than that of Ca. In conclusion, both stream water and groundwater were influenced by anthropogenic contamination. These changes were closely related to land use in the study area. The upstream areas are primarily composed of forests, whereas the downstream areas are composed of industrial complexes, wastewater treatment facilities, and agricultural areas, which are likely to affect both stream water and groundwater.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
• /
• v.20 no.6
• /
• pp.133-139
• /
• 2015

Attention to munitions constituents such as 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) and hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) in the firing ranges is increasing due to their toxicity and high mobility to the environment. It is helpful to use a systemic model to predict the amount of contaminants for the establishment of environmental management of firing ranges. This study employed Training Range Environmental Evaluation and Characterization System (TREECS) program to estimate the mobility characteristics of TNT and RDX via groundwater leaching, soil erosion and surface water runoff. The prediction results of the TNT and RDX migration with TREECS showed that 68% of initial TNT and 21% of initial RDX were discharged through the soil erosion and the 20% of initial TNT and 54% of initial RDX ran out the firing range via the groundwater leaching. The rest of the initial TNT and RDX moved to adjacent surface water via surface runoff. The data suggest that soil erosion and surface runoff occupying 80% of TNT to the total amount are important migration pathways. On the other hand, groundwater leachning occupying 54% to the total amount was also important pathway for RDX.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
• /
• v.9 no.7
• /
• pp.73-85
• /
• 2008

320 national groundwater monitoring stations have been constructed since 1995 and groundwater levels are measured automatically 4 times a day at each well. It has a difficulty to estimate an average recharge rate of watershed using the recharge rate of the monitoring site because of the lack of its representative on converting a point recharge rate into a spatial one. In this study, the relations between site characteristics (topography, hydraulics, geology, facilities, etc.) and recharge rates of 223 monitoring sites, which were selected using cluster analysis, were analyzed using statistical methods, and finally, regression models were constructed for a recharge rate estimation of non-measured areas. The independent variables for these simple regression models, 1) width of adjacent stream, 2) distance to the nearest stream, 3) topographic slope, and 4) rock type, are proposed using analysis of variance. These models have lots of advantages such as an easy data collection from topographic and geologic maps, a few input variables, and also simplicity in use. Suitability analysis from the comparison between estimation values and original ones at monitoring sites shows that these models are useful for a groundwater recharge estimation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
• /
• 2001.04a
• /
• pp.124-127
• /
• 2001

The purpose of this study is to investigate and evaluate management status of use-completed landfill in Kyunggido area and characteristics of its surrounding soil contamination. The soil samples showed Showed the anxious standard of soil contamination. The effect of liner system and leachate treatment unit showed very low because of showing similar concentration with non system landfill. Therefore, the further supplementation of leachate treatment unit, rainfall exclusion unit, LFG exclusion unit etc. must be performed to ensure a efficient management for landfills.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
• /
• 2004.09a
• /
• pp.269-272
• /
• 2004

The use of colloidal gas aphron (CGA), as an external oxygen carrier, provides a promising alternative to promote aerobic bioremediation of BTEX in the subsurface environment. CGA is a stable bubble supported by three surfactant layers and can supply oxygen below the soil surface uniformly due to its plug-flow characteristic. Since CGA has a hydrophobic layer that can act as a partitioning medium for hydrophobic contaminants it is known to facilitate desorption of soil-sorbed contaminants. In addition, bioaugmentation and biostimulation are possibly achieved by using CGA when generated from a solution containing BTEX-degrading microorganisms and appropriate nutrients. In this study, we presented the physico-chemical characteristics of CGA generated from a solution composed of microorganisms and nutrients. The applicability of CGA as an in situ aerobic bioremediation technology of BTEX will be further evaluated.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
• /
• v.12 no.5
• /
• pp.19-32
• /
• 2007

In Korea, there have been various methods of estimating groundwater recharge which generally can be subdivided into three types: baseflow separation method by means of groundwater recession curve, water budget analysis based on lumped conceptual model in watershed, and water table fluctuation method (WTF) by using the data from groundwater monitoring wells. However, groundwater recharge rate shows the spatial-temporal variability due to climatic condition, land use and hydrogeological heterogeneity, so these methods have various limits to deal with these characteristics. To overcome these limitations, we present a new method of estimating recharge based on water balance components from the SWAT-MODFLOW which is an integrated surface-ground water model. Groundwater levels in the interest area close to the stream have dynamics similar to stream flow, whereas levels further upslope respond to precipitation with a delay. As these behaviours are related to the physical process of recharge, it is needed to account for the time delay in aquifer recharge once the water exits the soil profile to represent these features. In SWAT, a single linear reservoir storage module with an exponential decay weighting function is used to compute the recharge from soil to aquifer on a given day. However, this module has some limitations expressing recharge variation when the delay time is too long and transient recharge trend does not match to the groundwater table time series, the multi-reservoir storage routing module which represents more realistic time delay through vadose zone is newly suggested in this study. In this module, the parameter related to the delay time should be optimized by checking the correlation between simulated recharge and observed groundwater levels. The final step of this procedure is to compare simulated groundwater table with observed one as well as to compare simulated watershed runoff with observed one. This method is applied to Mihocheon watershed in Korea for the purpose of testing the procedure of proper estimation of spatio-temporal groundwater recharge distribution. As the newly suggested method of estimating recharge has the advantages of effectiveness of watershed model as well as the accuracy of WTF method, the estimated daily recharge rate would be an advanced quantity reflecting the heterogeneity of hydrogeology, climatic condition, land use as well as physical behaviour of water in soil layers and aquifers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
• /
• 2004.09a
• /
• pp.119-120
• /
• 2004

Urban groundwater has a unique hydrologic system because of the complex surface and subsurface infrastructures such as deep foundation of many high buildings, subway systems, and sewers and public water supply systems. It generally has been considered that increased surface impermeability reduces the amount of groundwater recharge. On the other hand, leaks from sewers and public water supply systems may generate the large amounts of recharges. All of these urban facilities also may change the groundwater quality by the recharge of a myriad of contaminants. This study was performed to determine the factors controlling the recharge of deep groundwater in an urban area, based on the hydrogeochemical characteristics. The term ‘contamination’ in this study means any kind of inflow of shallow groundwater regardless of clean or contaminated. For this study, urban groundwater samples were collected from a total of 310 preexisting wells with the depth over 100 m. Random sampling method was used to select the wells for this study. Major cations together with Si, Al, Fe, Pb, Hg and Mn were analyzed by ICP-AES, and Cl, N $O_3$, N $H_4$, F, Br, S $O_4$and P $O_4$ were analyzed by IC. There are two groups of groundwater, based on hydrochemical characteristics. The first group is distributed broadly from Ca-HC $O_3$ type to Ca-C1+N $O_3$ type; the other group is the Na+K-HC $O_3$ type. The latter group is considered to represent the baseline quality of deep groundwater in the study area. Using the major ions data for the Na+K-HC $O_3$ type water, we evaluated the extent of groundwater contamination, assuming that if subtract the baseline composition from acquired data for a specific water, the remaining concentrations may indicate the degree of contamination. The remainder of each solute for each sample was simply averaged. The results showed that both Ca and HC $O_3$ represent the typical solutes which are quite enriched in urban groundwater. In particular, the P$CO_2$ values calculated using PHREEQC (version 2.8) showed a correlation with the concentrations of maior inorganic components (Na, Mg, Ca, N $O_3$, S $O_4$, etc.). The p$CO_2$ values for the first group waters widely ranged between about 10$^{-3.0}$ atm to 10$^{-1.0}$ atm and differed from those of the background water samples belonging to the Na+K-HC $O_3$ type (<10$^{-3.5}$ atm). Considering that the p$CO_2$ of soil water (near 10$^{-1.5}$ atm), this indicates that inflow of shallow water is very significant in deep groundwaters in the study area. Furthermore, the P$CO_2$ values can be used as an effective parameter to estimate the relative recharge of shallow water and thus the contamination susceptibility. The results of our present study suggest that down to considerable depth, urban groundwater in crystalline aquifer may be considerably affected by the recharge of shallow water (and pollutants) from an adjacent area. We also suggest that for such evaluation, careful examination of systematically collected hydrochemical data is requisite as an effective tool, in addition to hydrologic and hydrogeologic interpretation.ion.ion.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.37-50
• /
• 2019

It is possible that radon removal in groundwater of small-scale water supply system (SWSS) is caused by atmospheric storage and aeration facilities installed in the water tank. Radon removal rates at water tank and tap of the 32 SWSS during summer season ranged from -69.3% to 62.7% (average 25.7%) and from -64.3% to 83.1% (average 30.3%) while those of 16 SWSS during autumn season ranged from 21.3% to 78.0% (average 42.8%) and from 17.7% to 66.9% (average 44.8%). The reason of higher radon removal rate in the autumn season compared with the summer season is due to higher atmospheric storage effect by lower groundwater use rate. The radon removal rates at the water tank from 12 SWSS were 47.4~94.0% (average 78.9%), in which the removal rates at the atmospheric storage are also included. Atmospheric storage and aeration can be used to reduce radon concentration in SWSS groundwater. For more efficient use of radon reduction, further studies are necessary to assess the radon removal rate considering variation conditions of radon concentration in groundwater, size and forms of water tank, change in groundwater usage rate, aeration capacity and ventilation facilities.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.28 no.6
• /
• pp.626-633
• /
• 2006

Bucheon city has been rapidly urbanized and steadily enlarged. Also, the city depends on groundwater as an alternative water resource. The objective of this study is to characterize the hydrogeology in this city including the recharge of groundwater and hydraulic property of an aquifer in order to investigate the chemical characteristics and contamination of groundwater in the Bucheon area. Eleven groundwater wells in the Bucheon area were selected for applying certain hydraulic tests, such as pumping and recovery tests. Theis method and Theis recovery method were used to obtain hydraulic parameters, such as hydraulic conductivity, transmissivity by applying recovery tests. The playground of school and uncovered areas layed a major function of recharging areas. The groundwater well in these areas showed high recharge, transmissivity, and hydraulic conductivity. In a downtown area, groundwaier wells showed low pumping capacity and hydraulic parameters. Groundwater samples were collected from 48 different locations in the Bucheon area and that showed very various chemical composition in groundwater Their electrical conductivity showed various ranges from 70.4 to $1,287{\mu}S/cm$. The composition more significantly affected the groundwater due to the land use and urbanization than that of the aquifer rock type.