Tutorial to create a geospatial Voronoi-sh mesh with Python, Scipy and Geopandas

Divide a continuous media as a hydrological / hydrogeological basin into discrete parts is an art. Cell size have to related to hydrological features, cell number have to be optimized to cover areas of interest with an adequate refinement while minimizing the total cell number. The computational process has be fast to allow user run multiple times to achieve a desired mesh.

We have done a tutorial that creates a Voronoi-sh mesh over shapefiles with several options for refinement and polygon relaxation, resulting polygons are clipped to the mesh boundary and exported as shapefile or geojson. The script was done with Python, Scipy, and Geopandas.

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Are hydrogeologist - numerical modelers limited without programming?

A great question came when we deal with numerical modeling in modern times or in the last 5 years, and that question is how much programming skills should a hydrogeologist - numerical modeler have? This question is above this one: Should a hydrogeologist - numerical modeler need to program in any language?

As a part of an socratic method attempt to answer this, we will split the question into some subquestions.

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8 Tutorials of Contaminant Transport Modeling in Modflow and MT3DMS / MT3D

Groundwater remediation is a challenge for stakeholders, scientists and population due to the limited baselines, high uncertainty, limited budgets and timeframes, and not so strong modeling capabilities of related professionals on a general scope (don’t take it personal). We might think about the success of groundwater remediation when we achieve a big group - more than a hundred per country - of geoscientists whit high skills on groundwater modeling distributed on the private sector, the regulatory sector and academia.

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Groundwater modeling tutorial in MODFLOW 6 with regional flow, lakes, rives and piezometers

We have developed an applied groundwater modeling case on the mesoscale that covers the most relevant physical process that affect the underground flow regime. Numerical simulation was constructed on Modflow 6 and Model Muse 4 on steady state conditions with variable hydraulic conductivity with depth to represent interbedded low conductivity layers. The tutorial cover all the steps of model and boundary condition setup, working with spatial data, analysis of water balance and review of water levels on piezometers.

Note: This is a base case for a coming webinar in sensibility analysis with MODFLOW 6, Python and the Flopy and Salib libraries. More information of this event will be posted on our social networks.

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How to insert Piezometers (HOB) into a Regional Modflow 6 Model and plot Observed - Calculated Heads

This tutorial has the complete process to insert piezometers as a HOB package into a regional groundwater flow in Modflow6. Original location, surface elevation and screen elevation are in csv format that was converted to shapefile in order to be imported by Model Muse 4. The tutorial also covers a Python script to represent the plot of calculated-observed heads with the NRMSE value as a header.

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Web 3D Representation of a MODFLOW Model with Hataripy, Paraview and Steno3D

Groundwater can’t be seen (because its on the ground, obviously) and groundwater flow is extremely hard to understand unless we have a bigger scope of the theory and main features of the hydrogeological flow regime. One of the limitations for the understanding is the lack of interactive tools that provides user friendly environments for the representation of recharge zones, discharge zones, wells, wetlands, and other hydrogeological features.

We have developed a tutorial for the web representation of a MODFLOW model main features and head results in a combined process with the use of the Hataripy library, Paraview, Python and Steno3D.

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Geochemical Speciation Modeling and Analysis with Phreeqc and Julia - Tutorial

The speciation modeling allows to calculate the distribution of aqueous species in a solution. Phreeqc is capable to simulate this speciation calculation and we are going to demonstrate this capability on a study case of aqueous species in seawater. Modeling was done with a Phreeqc executable and results were analysed on a interactive Julia script. Both parts were done on a Jupyter Lab session.

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Websites where you can download complete groundwater flow models in MODFLOW

Learning groundwater modeling is a challenge for the complexities of the codes, the lack or scarce piezometric and water quality data, the heterogeneity of the porous media and the few resources to explore complete and applied groundwater models with different boundary conditions and predictive scenarios.

Just few websites had uploaded complete groundwater flow models in MODFLOW and are accessible to the general public. We have to admit that most of the websites come from public institutions in the US. We hope that in a near future we can have more resources to get model reports and the complete MODFLOW model.

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Unofficial MODFLOW flow and transport executables for Linux (Ubuntu tested)

It might be that you are a talented groundwater modeler and very proficient with Python and Flopy that you start to realize that you don´t need to work in Windows anymore and want to migrate your favorite groundwater modeling code to other nice, soft, and warm Linux-based operating systems. Or, it might be the case that you want to configure and run MODFLOW models as a part of a webapp or in a web server. For the reasons mentioned before and other reasons that modern world could bring to us, a compiled version of MODFLOW in Linux is needed.

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Temporal discretization impact on MODFLOW Model Heads and Water Budget

For a transient model, a modeler needs to conceptualize a coherent and feasible time discretization approach, nevertheless searching for temporal discretization guidelines the Internet gives you digital noise: nothing relevant, nothing precise, nothing useful. These is the type of situation where you ask yourself: how many stress periods do I need, how many time steps do I require, which should be an appropriate size of the model output, or more important, will the size and number of stress periods and time steps have an effect on the model output?

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How to do more Groundwater Modeling (or any modeling) in less amount of time

Because time matters and everybody wants results and solutions now, groundwater modelers (or any water resources modeler) have to think how they can do more with the limited time available. This is a restructuration, a reengineering, a new conceptualization of not only what we do, but how we do, and if in the end we are happy with the main results, and secondary results we get from our modeling work.

Groundwater modelers are water resources specialists with high skills in computing, coding, maths and groundwater flow regime comprehension. The type of work, the complexity of the given areas of study, the limited observation data, the limited budget, the short completion times and the overall low perception and low understanding of groundwater flow and groundwater quality makes the modeling work somehow particular where we have to adopt special techniques to deliver good work while preserving the modeler integrity and wellness.

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The soft and hard courses every Applied Hydrogeology Master Program should have

There isn’t as well a clear definition of applied hydrogeology, that following the literal meaning should be the hydrogeology in practice. We like the definition of applied hydrogeology as the real world hydrogeology, as the hydrogeology of non-homogeneous, non-infinite, non-isotropic and even non-porous media; applied hydrogeology is the hydrogeology that goes behind the book, far away from the “aquifer, aquitard, aquiclude” classification. Applied hydrogeology is the part of hydrogeology that solve problems, the science that tells us if the groundwater remediation will work, if a industrial complex will have water on the coming decade, or when the salinitization from the pumping well will overcome the reverse osmosis plant capacity.

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6 aquifers that every hydrogeologist should visit on a lifetime

Perception and interest on the groundwater resources are of high initial interest but long term low popularity, that is why normal and plain hydrogeologist need to promote an innovative perspective of the relation from human society with the groundwater resources as a strong part for every environmental protection plan and sustainable management policy elaboration.

This article has a list of aquifers around the globe, with special characteristics where a normal audience can see how water can exist below surface, how people have interacted with the aquifer

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Which is the most critical hydrogeological data needed for a numerical model?

From a conversation with a specialist in soil subsidence we came to the conclusion about which was the most critical hydrogeological data needed for a numerical model. There is a proposed list of required data on this link, but when we plan a hydrogeological study which is critical? Data about the groundwater flow regime and the hydrogeological environment is always scarce. And there are even more complications on the data gathering because these data depend on a number of institutions and shareholders that could not be willing to share it because there is a mainstream idea

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Key aspects for the sustainable use of groundwater to meet industrial water demand

Hydrogeologist need to support the industry in a modular manner where hydrogeological concepts and evaluations has to be understood by all the related stakeholders in order to conduct an industrial activity with a clear sense of pumping / water level performance and changes in water quality with time.

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Stable Isotope Representation from Groundwater Samples with Python Pandas - Tutorial

Stable isotope analysis is a powerful tool for the evaluation of groundwater origin and groundwater dynamics, specially when the observation points and recording periods are limited. Isotope representation can be done with any spreadsheet software, but the workflow is defficient specially when plotting scatter points, solid lines, labels and legends.

This tutorial shows a the complete procedure to represent a stable isotope representation of groundwater samples from remediation site in New Mexico, USA. The script is done with Python 3, Pandas and other packages that come alread installed on the Anaconda distribution. Code for the representation of the Global Meteoric Water Line is also included as well as options for the figure storage.

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A new version of the FREEWAT plugin (v.1.1.1) for QGIS is now available for download!

Dear FREEWAT Users,

We wish to inform you that a new version of the FREEWAT plugin (v.1.1.1) is available since December the 4th 2018.

Besides fixing some minor bugs (thanks to Iacopo Borsi – TEA SISTEMI SpA) notified by the FREEWAT Users, this release includes:

  •  an enhancement of the Multi-Node Well package (MNW2) of MODFLOW (thanks to Giovanna De Filippis – Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna);

  •  two new packages for solute exchange with surface water bodies (e.g., rivers, lakes). This is now accomplished in FREEWAT through the integration of the Streamflow Transport (SFT) and Lake Transport (LKT) packages of MT3D-USGS (thanks to Giovanna De Filippis – Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna).

A list of the bugs fixed is available in the plugin folder.

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Groundwater Modeling as an Example of Modeling As A Product (MAAP) - Advantages and Limitations

On a conversation with a colleague we have discussed the potential of selling groundwater modeling through the Internet. The idea (that is not so new) to develop groundwater models from remote areas optimizing the human resources, logistics and time involved on the evaluations its kind of the next step in numerical modeling but it has some arguments to be discussed for its implementation. From the management point of view, if we focus on mass production from and if we take into account theoretical concepts of business administration the idea of outsourcing tasks can be ideal for the success of a company or industry; however from the hydrogeological point of view there are serious complexities on the groundwater flow regime analysis, limitations on the input data and skills deficiencies that put the hydrogeological evaluation in risk if we work a groundwater model online.

In a global world we can make video call to almost anywhere for a reasonable price and our need/disponibility of broadband is always increasing but our ideas are not well conected and the group ideas are more distant than religion beliefs, therefore the method of developing a groundwater model could be of great importance in the quality of the groundwater evaluation through numerical modeling. This article discuss some key aspects of developing a groundwater model as a product (MAAP) and review its advantages and limitations.

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Key Concepts for Groundwater Management in Arid Regions

If we compare the amount of hydrologist vs. the amount of hydrogeologist, we can see that there is a gap in between the number of specialists in surface water and groundwater. Traditionally, the hydrology as a academic course is related to surface hydrology while the underground hydrology (hydrogeology) has been scarcely treated in typical undergraduate or graduate studies. As a comparison with then chicken and the egg, the lower or less popular academic opportunities in hydrogeology has produced a limited number of groundwater specialist who deal with a limited sort of groundwater studies.

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What is the relevance of confined / unconfined aquifer type on groundwater flow?

Maybe confined or unconfined aquifer are terms that would sound familiar from your first hydrogeology class, however it´s a simple definition about the location of the hydraulic head over the vertical limits of your aquifer. It might be that you have employed those terms in different reports, or maybe you have seen this aquifer classification on some environmental impact assessments or geological reports, but which is the relevance of this classification on the groundwater flow? This article talks about the comparison of the the confined / unconfined aquifer condition based on numerical modeling with some discussion about the convertible character of the aquifer.

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