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ON THE HYDRAULICS OF STREAM FLOW ROUTING WITH BANK STORAGE: JOURNAL ARTICLE
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NRMRL-ADA-00232 Hantush*, M.M., Harada, M., and Marino, M.A. On the Hydraulics of Stream Flow Routing with Bank Storage. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering 7 (1):76-89 (2002). EPA/600/J-02/173. Bank storage is a process in which volumes of water are temporally retained by alluvial stream banks during flood events, and gradually released to partially sustain baseflow. This process has important hydrologic and ecological implications. In this paper, analytical solutions are developed for routing stream flow, lateral stream-aquifer interactions, and aquifer storage. In effect, the stream flow routing Muskingum method is modified for bank storage. The analysis is based on one-dimensional lateral groundwater flow in semi-infinite homogeneous unconfined aquifers, which are in contact with streams through semipervious bed sediments. Impulse response and unit step response functions are derived for the stream-aquifer system, using the method of Laplace transformation. These kernels relate stream outflow, stream-aquifer flow, bank storage, and cumulative reach outflow, to a general stream inflow function through convolution integrals. The impulse response function decreases with increasing aquifer hydraulic conductivity at earlier time, but with greater and more persisting values later. In contrast, larger aquifer conductivity decreases the unit step response values at earlier time, but with a diminishing effect at later times. The dependence of stream flow and bank storage on aquifer