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A Structured Approach for Calibrating Steady‐State Ground‐Water Flow Models
Author(s) -
Yeh T.C. Jim,
Mock Peter A.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
groundwater
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.84
H-Index - 94
eISSN - 1745-6584
pISSN - 0017-467X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-6584.1996.tb02025.x
Subject(s) - aquifer , hydraulic head , head (geology) , homogeneous , steady state (chemistry) , flow (mathematics) , scale (ratio) , groundwater , geology , hydraulic conductivity , boundary value problem , soil science , geotechnical engineering , hydrology (agriculture) , mathematics , mechanics , geometry , mathematical analysis , geomorphology , physics , chemistry , combinatorics , quantum mechanics , soil water
A structured approach for calibrating two‐dimensional, steady‐state ground‐water flow models is developed. The first step of the proposed approach is to replace the heterogeneous aquifer with an equivalent homogeneous one using the geometric mean of transmissivities. Then, boundary conditions are adjusted with the aid of a scatter gram to reduce bias of the simulated hydraulic head distribution of the equivalent homogeneous aquifer. After the bias is removed, the differences between the simulated mean hydraulic head and the observed hydraulic head, resulting from small‐scale heterogeneities, are then reduced by adjustment of local transmissivity values based on hydrological and geological information. The validity of the proposed procedure was tested for a hypothetical aquifer under idealized conditions and it was then applied to the Avra Valley in southern Arizona to demonstrate its utility in real world scenarios.