Representation of Urban Recharge Processes in the Distributed Recharge Model (ZOODRM) of the Glasgow urban area, Scotland

Current interest in groundwater in the Glasgow area is being driven by ongoing urban regeneration and development, and is largely focussed on the role of shallow groundwater and its interaction with surface water. There is a need to improve the overall understanding of the hydrogeology of the whole of the Glasgow city area. The object-oriented recharge code ZOODRM has been applied to construct a water balance for the full Clyde Basin catchment. Because of the intense urbanisation of the study area ZOODRM has been modified and a new urban leakage mechanism has been added to simulate urban recharge processes. Detailed land-use mapping has been used to calculate the percentages of the major urban area features (buildings, gardens, and roads) within each model node. The culverted rivers in the Glasgow city area have been included in the model using the numerical river object. The model has been calibrated by matching the simulated and observed river flows. The newly developed urban leakage mechanism allows a more realistic representation of the urban recharge and run-off processes.