H. Lange et al., SHALLOW-WATER FLOW IN A DEEPLY WEATHERED GRANITE AQUIFER AND IMPLICATIONS FOR HYDROCHEMICAL MODELS, Water, air and soil pollution, 85(3), 1995, pp. 1825-1830
Starting in 1987, comprehensive investigations in the 4.2 km(2) Lehste
nbach catchment in the Fichtelgebirge (South Germany) were performed t
o determine water and matter fluxes. The catchment is nearly totally c
overed by Norway Spruce stands. The measurements indicate that the ver
tical profile of groundwater flow is strongly heterogeneous: lateral f
low in the upper aquifer layers seems to prevail. As the upper layers
show marked acidification, only a small portion of precipitation water
infiltrating during storm events can be buffered here, resulting in a
cidic catchment runoff. On the other hand, this implies a remarkable r
etardation of acidification of the deeper layers. The purpose of this
paper is to investigate the hydrological specifics of the catchment, e
specially to identify and characterize the flowpaths. To that end, we
use two different modelling approaches. Results of these model runs ca
n be used to assess the impacts on hydrochemical models.