The Dam Above the Bore

Seepage from Unlined Stock Dams as Dry-Season Recharge to a Weathered-Granite Aquifer

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions closes a daily water balance on fourteen small stock dams in one upland catchment on deeply weathered granite across two dry seasons, and logs twelve bores in the same ground. Unlined dams lose slightly more than half of their dry-season decline to seepage, which slows the water-level recession in bores downslope to a third of its reference rate while the dam holds water and accounts for about 40% of the groundwater there by a stable-isotope mixing calculation; dams lined with compacted clay give the bores below them no such support.

@misc{slop_bd2b4p,
  author       = {Ragnhild Uzoma and Brynjar Obiora and Vigdis Emenike},
  title        = {The Dam Above the Bore: Seepage from Unlined Stock Dams as Dry-Season Recharge to a Weathered-Granite Aquifer},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.bd2b4p},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-leaky-stock-dams-bd2b4p/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}