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International audience; In the context of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC), which aims to achieve a good ecological and chemical status for all natural aquatic environments, it is necessary to better quantifying pesticide transfers in agricultural watersheds. Modeling is a relevant tool to study the processes occuring in the fate of pesticides, and identifying sound managing solutions to water contamination. Physically-based and spatially distributed models are particularly useful to represent in detail processes and interactions between the soil surface and subsurface. In particular, they can help to assess the role of landscape elements such as vegetative buffer strips, ditches, ... . The present study aims to test a recently added reactive transport to the coupled surface water/groundwater 3D model CATHY, in order to represent pesticide transfers at the watershed scale. Contaminant reactions implemented are linear adsorption and degradation (first order kinetics). The model has been successfully validated on laboratory data and submitted to a sensitivity analysis as a further step of validation. In this study, we tested the model on field conditions, simulating a 150 m x 40 m hillslope in the Morcille catchment (Beaujolais, France). The hillslope is predominantly covered with a chemically weeded vineyard crossed by 4 very shallow ditches gathering the runoff towards a concrete channel. The flow coming from the vineyard plot in then conducted on a 25 m long vegetative buffer strip. The site is instrumented with piezometers, lysimeters, flow and solute concentration measurement devices. Real field conditions makes the model's application more difficult because of the complexity in representing the interactive processes in a large domain, combined to uncertainty on input parameters that is important in field experiments. However, such challenging modeling allows a more comprehensive understanding of solute transfers and gives some keys to evaluate the efficiency of mitigation elements of the landscape.

International audience; In the context of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC), which aims to achieve a good ecological and chemical status for all natural aquatic environments, tools to help understand and quantify pesticide transfers in agricultural watersheds are necessary. Models which are physically based and spatially distributed can be particularly useful for representing in detail processes and interactions between the soil surface and subsurface and thus to evaluate the management of landscape elements remediation. The present study aims to test and validate a recently added reactive transport to the coupled surface water/groundwater model CATHY, in order to represent pesticide transfers. Contaminant reactions implemented in CATHY for this study are linear adsorption and degradation (first order kinetics). The advection part of the model is solved according to the finite volume method and reactions are computed on volumes using a sequential non-iterative approach. The CATHY model has been tested on laboratory data and with a Morris sensitivity analysis and is applied now in real field conditions, on a vegetative buffer strip monitored by Irstea in a vineyard catchment (Beaujolais, France). The site is instrumented with lysimeters, flow and solute concentration measurement devices. This test represents a complex step into the model validation, initial and boundary conditions are not fully controlled, and field parameters measurement are not fully known.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the influence of soil hydrodynamic characteristics variability on surface and subsurface flows at a vegetative buffer strip scale, using mechanist modeling. Cathy (CATchment HYdrology, Camporese et al. 2010) is a research partial-differential-equation-based model, solving Richards equation in 3 dimensions for water fluxes in the soil, and a simplified scheme of Navier-Stokes equation for surface runoff. Its particularity is to handle interactions between surface and subsurface, which is a key point concerning water but also solute transport in vegetative filter strips. Balance between runoff and infiltration, flow pathways, water content, are very sensitive to hydrodynamic characteristics, especially saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat). This soil property is very difficult to measure and to describe at a fine scale, since it is highly variable spatially in the 3 dimensions. Models described by PDE such as Richards equation need a value of Ksat at each soil layer and each node, though simpler conceptual modeling run with average values of larger cells or storages, using some 'representative Ksat' at a larger scale. This kind of models however can simulate with high quality the processes despite the simplifications they make on parametrization. Using a mechanist and physically-based modeling, we evaluate the influence of Ksat high spatial variability on fluxes, by comparison with observations from an experimental vegetative filter strip. It should allow to understand until which degree of simplification one can describe hydrodynamic characteristics in modeling for more conceptual models.

We present a coupling between the one-dimensional Richards equation for vertical unsaturated flow and the one-dimensional hillslope-storage Boussinesq equation (HSB) for lateral saturated flow along complex hillslopes. Here the capillary fringe is included in the flow domain as an integral part of the Boussinesq aquifer. The coupling allows quantitative investigation of the role of unsaturated storage in the relationship between rainfall and recharge. The coupled model (HSB coupled) is compared to the original HSB model (HSB original) and a three-dimensional Richards equation (RE) based model (taken to be the benchmark) on a set of seven synthetic hillslopes, ranging from convergent to divergent. Using HSB original, the water tables are overestimated and the outflow rates are generally underestimated, and there is no delay between rainfall and recharge. The coupled model, however, shows a remarkably good match with the RE model in terms of outflow rates, and the delay between rainfall and recharge is captured well. We also see a clear improvement in the match to the water tables, even though the values are still overestimated for some hillslope shapes, in particular the convergent slopes. We show that for the hillslope configurations and scenarios examined in this paper it is possible to reproduce hydrographs and water table dynamics with a good degree of accuracy using a low-dimensional hydrological model.

In hydraulic groundwater theory the parameter drainable porosity f (a storage coefficient that accounts for the effect of the unsaturated zone on water table dynamics) is usually treated as a constant. For shallow unconfined aquifers the value of this parameter, however, depends on the depth to the water table and the water retention characteristics of the soil. In this study an analytical expression for f as a function of water table depth is derived under the assumption of quasi-steady state hydraulic equilibrium, in this way accounting, in part, for the effects of the unsaturated zone on groundwater dynamics. The derived expression is implemented in the nonlinear hillslope-storage Boussinesq (HSB) model (Troch et al., 2003) to simulate the drainage response of complex hillslopes. The model's behavior is analyzed by comparison to (1) the HSB model with a constant value for f and (2) measurements of water tables and outflow hydrographs on a 6.0 × 2.5 × 0.5 m laboratory hillslope experiment. The comparison is conducted for a pure drainage case on two different hillslope shapes (linearly convergent and divergent) and for three different slope inclinations (5%, 10%, and 15%). Comparison 1 is run in an uncalibrated and a fully calibrated mode, and it enables us to evaluate the effect of a dynamic, state-dependent value for f on model output. Comparison 2 allows us to test the HSB model on several hillslope configurations and to analyze whether the concept of a storage-dependent f enhances the model performance. The comparison of the HSB models to the measurements from the laboratory hillslopes shows that it is possible to capture the general features of the outflow hydrograph during a drainage experiment using either one of the HSB models. Overall, the original (constant f) HSB model, with one fitting parameter more than the revised HSB model, shows a slightly better fit on the hydrographs when compared to the revised (variable f) HSB model. However, the peak outflow values (the first few minutes after initiation of the experiments) are better captured by the revised HSB model. The revised HSB model's performance in simulating water table movements is much more accurate than that of the original HSB model. The improved match of the revised HSB model to piezometric measurements is worth stressing because the ability to model water tables is a key attribute of the model, making it possible to investigate phenomena such as saturation excess runoff. Also noteworthy is the good match between the revised HSB model and the outflow measurements, without any calibration, for the divergent slopes. The changing values of the calibrated drainable porosity parameter for the original HSB model as different configurations are simulated (slope angle, plan shape, initial conditions), together with the ability of the revised HSB model to more accurately simulate water table dynamics, clearly demonstrates the importance of regarding drainable porosity as a dynamic, storage-dependent parameter