Developing a Surface Water - Groundwater Interaction Model for Letaba River System in South Africa
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Date
2006
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KATAMBARA
Abstract
There is a constant increase in water demand and a pressing need to conserve the
environment in the Letaba River system. This is leading to a situation where the demand
for water may have outstripped the capacity of the existing resources to sustainably meet
them. In the past dams were constructed and boreholes drilled as a strategy of reconciling
demand and supply and this is evidenced by the numerous dams and boreholes in the
Letaba River system. There are five major dams; three of which have a capacity
exceeding 60 million cubic meters and also more than 3000 boreholes in the river basin.
Currently, all the dams are stressed and the releases from Tzaneen Dam, intended to meet
the water requirements of downstream users including Kruger National Park fail to meet
these requirements substantially. Although these demands are high and probably exceed
the system’s capacity, it is likely that the reliability of supply can be improved
significantly if the surface water - groundwater (sw/gw) interactions within the basin are
modelled comprehensively and then incorporated into system operation. This paper
reports on an ongoing development of a sw/gw model of the Letaba River System. The
model development intends to maximize the use of the relevant available information and
data and recognizes the existence of an interaction zone which forms a major link of
many of the processes that will be included in the model. It has been found that the scale
of monitoring processes in the river system is inadequate and is a significant constraint to
the development of the model that is expected to impact on the level of confidence in
model implementation and application. Incorporation of uncertainties will therefore be an
integral part of the modelling.
Description
This journal article was published by Prof.Katambara in 2006