Introduction

Land-climate interaction (LCI) analysis is a critical part of soil cover design and mine closure planning. The global objective of the analysis is to understand the moisture dynamics within the cover system and to ‘close the water balance’. Closing the water balance implies that the various fluxes incident on the ground surface can be resolved; that is, mass balance can be verified by ensuring that the ‘ins’ equal the ‘outs’. In the case of the SEEP/W LCI boundary condition, the components of a surface water balance include rainfall, snowmelt, actual evaporation, and runoff.

This example demonstrates how to interpret the surface water balance for a simple hillslope problem.