Reconstruction of water infiltration rate reducibility in response to suspended solid characteristics using singular spectrum analysis: An application to the Caspian Sea Coast of Nur, Iran

Abstract

Drawing a distinction between the suspended solid size and concentration impacts on physical clogging process in the Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) systems has been fraught with difficulties. Therefore, the current study was then aimed to statistically investigate and differentiate the impacts of clay-, silt- and sand-sized suspended solids at three concentration levels including 2, 5 and 10 g/L, compared with the clean water (0 g/L), on infiltration rate reducibility. The treatments were compared by virtue of Cohen's d effect size measure. Furthermore, the competency of Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) was evaluated in reconstruction of infiltration rate. Results showed that clay-sized suspended solids were found to be the most important determining factor in physical clogging occurrence. The effect size measure highlighted that a lower concentration level of clay-sized suspended solids, that is, 2 g/L could be more important in trigging the physical clogging than a higher concentration level of silt-sized suspended solids namely 5 g/L. Also, we recognized that concentration level of clay-sized suspended sediments could non-linearly decrease the infiltrability. Also, findings revealed that SSA represented a high level of competency in reconstruction of the infiltration rate under all treatments. Hence, SSA can be quite beneficial to MAR systems for forecasting applications.