Estimating Groundwater Recharge from Spring Records at Minefields

Groundwater recharge to an aquifer depends on the amount of precipitation, land use, and other factors. Direct measurement of recharge components is not possible. The purpose of this paper is to estimate ground-water recharge based on the analysis of spring hydrograph. Two methods of hydrograph recession analysis,(Boussinseq hyperbolic and Maillet exponential solution), were employed in a case study of Makeng mining area Fujian Province, China. The analyses allowed the characterization of the transformations between the input rainfall and the output discharge. The efficiency of this method was compared based on the recharge amount with a 3D finite difference model that simulates the natural aquifer. Results showed that the recharge calculated by the Maillet exponential analysis is about 14% average less than the recharge calculated by Boussinseq hyperbolic solution. The numerical model result was identical with Maillet exponential solution.