The impact of urban groundwater upon surface water - eTheses ...

REVIEW
of water quality which limits the usefulness of both groundwater and surface water resources
(Petts et al., 2002). The occurrence of contaminated groundwater related to urbanisation is
well known, both in the U.K. (Barrett et al., 1997, Lerner et al., 1996, Ford et al., 1994, Rivett
et al., 1990) and abroad (Eiswirth et al., 1997, Kacaroglu et al., 1997, Appleyard, 1995).
Likewise, the occurrence of poor quality urban surface waters is extremely common
(Kayabalý et al., 1999, Ziegler et al., 2001). However, urban groundwater and surface water
interactions are less well understood.
2.2 International Case Studies
To characterise the impact of urban groundwater on surface-water quality requires a broad
multidisciplinary approach involving hydrological, hydrogeological, hydrochemical and
ecological elements. To cover all these elements is generally beyond the scope of a single
study and previous work has often focussed on a particular groundwater and/or surface water
flow and/or quality issue. The scale of the studies can be divided into those that provide
detailed but localised information on a specific contaminant plume or process across the river
bed, and those that provide more general regional information on surface-water quality and
flow. Only limited work has been done on scaling up the effects of local processes to the
catchment scale. The urban groundwater system generally lies between these two extremes of
scale, having many potential contaminant sources but covering a limited extent of the total
catchment area.
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