• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.375-380
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• 2013

The concept of safe yield places an emphasis on balancing groundwater withdrawal with groundwater recharge but ignores naturally occurring groundwater discharge. Because streams and their alluvial aquifers are closely linked in terms of water supply and water quality, to be properly understood and managed they must be considered together. Therefore, some districts in Kansas have reevaluated their safe-yield policies to account for natural groundwater discharge and stream-aquifer interactions by amending their safe-yield regulations to include a portion of baseflow as the minimum desirable streamflow (MDS). This study proposes a modified safe-yield policy in which the drought flow is chosen as the MDS. Baseflow separation was conducted from streamflow hydrograph and the results are presented as a flow-duration curve. The exploitable groundwater can be determined by subtracting MDS from the cumulative baseflow. This method was tested in the Musimcheon watershed, which was validated for streamflow using the SWAT-K model. The annually averaged exploitable groundwater in the whole watershed was estimated to be 86 mm. The exploitable groundwater amounts were also estimated for each subwatershed in the Musimcheon watershed.