Earlier in Section 3.2., we learned how MAGNET treats the land surface as a drain to account for the aquifer drainage effects for lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands and springs. But we may want to treat the lakes differently, for example: as a source of water to the aquifer. An instance where this would be needed is when a pumping well is withdrawing groundwater near a stream, inducing water to move from the stream, into the aquifer system, and ultimately discharging from the well.
We now are going to add surface water bodies as conceptual features in our submodel. These features will come in two flavors: lakes and similar quiescent bodies of water, and rivers and streams. We will discuss them individually.