Study of land subsidence due to ground water extraction considering recharge

Land subsidence due to ground water withdrawal is a serious problem all over the world. However, in most of the analyzing methods deal with the pumping aquifers as an isolated system and no groundwater recharging happens during pumping. This paper presents a new method based on the water balance theory to calculate water head change due to water recharge. We use viscoelasticity diffusion equation to calculate the water head change, and derive the closed solution. The linear relationship between subsidence and head change has been proposed for settlement calculation. Using a case in a literature to testify the effectiveness of the present method, the result shows it is in good agreement with the measurement data, especially for the long-term pumping.