Groundwater head responses due to random stream stage fluctuations using basis splines

Stream‐aquifer interactions are becoming increasingly important processes in water resources and riparian management. The linearized Boussinesq equation describes the transient movement of a groundwater free surface in unconfined flow. Some standard solutions are those corresponding to an input, which is a delta function impulse, or to its integral, a unit step function in the time domain. For more complicated inputs, the response can be expressed as a convolution integral, which must be evaluated numerically. When the input is a time series of measured data, a spline function or piecewise polynomial can easily be fitted to the data. Any such spline function can be expressed in terms of a finite series of basis splines with numerical coefficients. The analytical groundwater response functions corresponding to these basis splines are presented, thus giving a direct and accurate way to calculate the groundwater response for a random time series input representing the stream stage. We use the technique to estimate responses due to a random stream stage time series and show that the predicted heads compare favorably to those obtained from numerical simulations using the Modular Three‐Dimensional Finite‐Difference Ground‐Water Flow Model (MODFLOW) simulations; we then demonstrate how to calculate residence times used for estimating riparian denitrification during bank storage.