In Rio Grande do Norte State, Barreiras aquifer is the most important groundwater reservoir. In local water resources planning it is estimated for year 2020 a rise of 35% in withdraws from that aquifer. In this sense, groundwater flow in Bonfim lake area has been hardly studied in order to evaluate how groundwater pumping interacts to surface water. The main objective in this work is to contribute to groundwater flow knowledge in the area and secondly to demonstrate the Analytic Element Method (AEM) functionality in strait (or elongated) aquifers by coupling the Method of Images. The proposed method allows the simulation to be extended infinitely between two straight lines. However, the results nearest regional boundaries become insensitive to the boundary shape. Thus, the simulation produced a recharge rate estimate about 0.9 mm/day. The groundwater pumping moves the Bonfim lake water level approximately to 5.0 m below.
Bonfim Lake; Analytic Elements; Method of Images
