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Calculation of aquifer parameters from sparse data
Author(s) -
Birtles A. B.,
Morel E. H.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/wr015i004p00832
Subject(s) - aquifer , interpolation (computer graphics) , groundwater , groundwater flow , groundwater model , hydraulic head , borehole , calibration , geology , hydrology (agriculture) , soil science , environmental science , remote sensing , computer science , geotechnical engineering , mathematics , statistics , artificial intelligence , motion (physics)
Automatic methods used for the calibration of regional groundwater models are notoriously sensitive to inadequacies in hydrological data used to determine the groundwater regime. The situation is often aggravated by errors introduced by manual interpolation to give estimates of piezometric head between observation boreholes, particularly in areas where these are sparse or locally nonexistent. In this paper a new technique is proposed for the automatic interpolation of groundwater level data that are scattered thinly over a regional aquifer system and the simultaneous determination of transmissivity and storage coefficient distributions. The method makes full use of all available information, and it is consistent with the two‐dimensional groundwater flow equations. Results are given to illustrate the success achieved by the method in a practical application.