Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Water Budget for Lake Trafford, a Natural Subtropical Lake in South Florida: An Example of Enhanced Groundwater Influx in a Subtropical Lake Subsequent to Organic Sediment Dredging

Serge Thomas
* ORCID logo ,
Mark A. Lucius
ORCID logo ,
Jong-Yeop Kim
,
Edwin M. Everham III
,
Dana L. Dettmar
,
Thomas M. Missimer
ORCID logo
Version 1 : Received: 15 March 2024 / Approved: 15 March 2024 / Online: 15 March 2024 (11:07:21 CET)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Thomas, S.; Lucius, M.A.; Kim, J.-Y.; Everham, E.M., III; Dettmar, D.L.; Missimer, T.M. Water Budget for Lake Trafford, a Natural Subtropical Lake in South Florida: An Example of Enhanced Groundwater Influx in a Subtropical Lake Subsequent to Organic Sediment Dredging. Water 2024, 16, 1188. Thomas, S.; Lucius, M.A.; Kim, J.-Y.; Everham, E.M., III; Dettmar, D.L.; Missimer, T.M. Water Budget for Lake Trafford, a Natural Subtropical Lake in South Florida: An Example of Enhanced Groundwater Influx in a Subtropical Lake Subsequent to Organic Sediment Dredging. Water 2024, 16, 1188.

Abstract

A very detailed water budget was conducted on Lake Trafford in southern Florida. The inflow was dominated by surface-water influx via five canals (61%) with groundwater influx constituting 12% and direct rainfall 27%. Lake discharge was dominated by sheet-flow (69%) and evapotranspiration (30.5%) with groundwater recharge of the hydraulically connected unconfined aquifer accounting for only 0.5%. Removal of 30 M tons (4.4 x 106 m3) of organic sediment impacted groundwater influx, causing enhanced groundwater flows into the deeper parts of the lake and mixed flows along the banks creating a rather unusual pattern. The large number of groundwater seepage meters used during the investigation led to a very reliable set of measurements with occasional failure of only a few meters. A distinctive relationship was found between the wet season lake stage, heavy rainfall events and pulses of exiting sheet-flow from the lake. Estimation of the evapotranspiration loss using data collected from a weather station on the lake allowed the use of three different models which, when averaged, produced results comparable to Lake Okeechobee (southern Florida). A limitation of the investigation was the inability to directly measure sheet-flow discharges, which had to be estimated as a residual within the calculated water budget.

Keywords

: subtropical natural lake; water budget; eutrophication; sediment dredging; organic sediment

Subject

Environmental and Earth Sciences, Water Science and Technology

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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