September 10, 2025

7 tutorials of MODFLOW6 and mf6Voronoi for mine related groundwater modeling

September 10, 2025/ Saul Montoya

Mining hydrogeology is one of the most challenging faces of hydrogeology since its evaluations are key components for the mine operation and where groundwater related decisions are needed on a short timeframe. We have developed a series of tutorials that will introduce general groundwater modelers to the specific tasks of mine hydrogeology. This tutorial selection starts from regional modeling and goes into inflow and contaminant transport with different levels of complexity.

September 03, 2025

Groundwater inflows to open pit modeling with faults of 1m using MODFLOW6 and mf6Voronoi - Tutorial

September 03, 2025/ Saul Montoya

Applied example of the simulation of groundwater inflow to a open pit considering faults of 1 meter thickness. The model has 6 stress period, one steady state and 5 transient stress periods representing the pit development over 4 years of a total mine life of 20 years. The tutorial shows the complete process beginning from mesh creation, model construction, water budget analysis and 3d representation.

August 29, 2025

How to do a georeferenced Stiff Diagram with Python 3 and QGIS 3 - Tutorial

August 29, 2025/ Saul Montoya

Stiff Diagrams are a common and powerful tool for the representation of surface water / groundwater main ions. Anion and cation concentrations are represented on equivalent weight (meq/l), and usually cations are represented at the left side and anions at the right side. Traditionally, this diagram is useful for the comparison of the main water chemical components by examination of a series of diagrams, however it was not easy to compare the diagrams with the position of the observacion point.

To enhance the chemical analysis on regional scale this tutorial has coupled the Stiff Diagrams with their position on a QGIS project. The diagramas are generated from a spreadsheet with Python on a Jupyter Notebook and stored a vector file (.svg), then the images files are referenced on a style file (.sld) and uploaded to QGIS3.

August 27, 2025

Inflow modeling to infiltration galleries with MODFLOW6 and mf6Voronoi - Tutorial

August 27, 2025/ Saul Montoya

Infiltration galleries are a low cost and low maintenance option for domestic water supply. The amount of inflow water and the interaction with the water bodies are main concerns on the evaluation and design of infiltration galleries. We have done an applied case of inflow simulation to infiltration galleries with MODFLOW6 based on Voronoi meshes. The example covers all steps from mesh creation, steady state model construction, simulation of infiltration galleries and the inflow calculation per gallery group. Finally a 3D representation of the model geometry, boundary conditions and head distribution is performed on Paraview.

August 22, 2025

Infiltration modeling in the unsaturated zone with MODFLOW6 and mf6Voronoi - Tutorial

August 22, 2025/ Saul Montoya

Applied case of infiltration simulation in the unsaturated zone using the UZF package of MODFLOW 6 on a geospatial Voronoi grid built with mf6Voronoi. The model is in uniform transient regime with 3 layers where infiltration in the unsaturated zone occurs in the first layer. An observation point is inserted at different depths to evaluate the depth-moisture profile over time for different infiltration rates; finally, a 3D representation of the final groundwater table surface is generated, showing the effect of boundary conditions and infiltration.

August 19, 2025

How to create a Geospatial Raster from a projected Reservoir with Python and hatariTools - Tutorial

August 19, 2025/ Saul Montoya

The task to modify geospatial rasters considering future elements can be a complex task with the available GIS tools. We have optimized the way we can represent the surface of future (or current) water reservoirs on a fully geospatial raster. This tutorial shows the complete process to create a geospatial raster (TIF file) based on the contours from the dam and the reservoir extension.

August 14, 2025

Contaminant plume modeling of a mining waste rock dump with MODFLOW 6 and mf6Voronoi - Tutorial

August 14, 2025/ Saul Montoya

This tutorial shows an applied case that covers the discretization of a model using Voronoi grids, taking into consideration the water network, the predictive flow area, and the model boundaries. Based on this mesh, a flow and transport model under steady-state conditions is constructed to simulate the contaminant plume over a period of 50 years, evaluated every 5 years. The model includes piezometers and the development of concentrations over time is evaluated using the Pandas library with Matplotlib. Finally, the entire model geometry, boundary conditions, hydraulic loads, and concentrations are visualized in 3D with Paraview.

August 04, 2025

Contaminant Plume from a Tailings Storage Facility Modeling with MODFLOW6 and mf6Voronoi - Tutorial

August 04, 2025/ Saul Montoya

MODFLOW6 with mf6Voronoi can handle the simulation of specific tasks related to the mine industry. We have already covered the simulation of pit inflows with Voronoi meshes and now we are going to model the seepage from a tailings storage facility. The applied case covers all steps from mesh construction, flow model and transport model. Results are plotted on 2d and exported to 3d in Vtk format.

July 28, 2025

How to reach small discretizations efficiently (till 1m) in MODFLOW6 with mf6Voronoi - Tutorial

July 28, 2025/ Saul Montoya

One of the promises of the Voronoi meshes on MODFLOW6 Disv is the efficient distribution of cell sizes that allows us to reach small sizes on certain areas of high interest like wells while keeping coarse cells on the areas with lower level of interest. This type of meshing has some issues that now are addressed on mf6Voronoi.

July 10, 2025

Developing a regional groundwater model for a mine project with MODFLOW6 and mf6Voronoi - Tutorial

July 10, 2025/ Saul Montoya

Sometimes regional models are required as an input for local models of flow and transport. This is an applied case of the groundwater modeling on the regional scale in the state of Guerrero, Mexico that will be the input for future local models of pit dewatering, and contaminant transport from the tailings dam and waste dump. The groundwater model is built with MODFLOW6 and mf6Voronoi on a series of Jupyter Notebooks and results are plotted with Paraview.

June 30, 2025

Determination of the Depression Cone from an Open Pit with MODFLOW6, Flopy and mf6Voronoi - Tutorial

June 30, 2025/ Saul Montoya

One of the key objectives from groundwater modeling in mining is the determination of pit inflows and the extension of the depression cone. This tutorial shows an applied case of determination of a depression cone from an open pit model built with MODFLOW6, Flopy and mf6Voronoi. The model has faults and the tutorial covers all steps from model import, data processing and export of geospatial data from the depression cone.

June 24, 2025

Implementation of Faults and Zone Budgets on a Open Pit MODFLOW 6 Voronoi Model - Tutorial

June 24, 2025/ Saul Montoya

The interaction of faults with the groundwater flow regimen on an open pit is a challenge on the conceptualization and simulation. Having smaller cells on the faults alignment with higher K can represent the general behaviour of faults and this is possible to simulate with MODFLOW 6 Voronoi models with Flopy and mf6Voronoi package. We have created a tutorial that implements faults on the area of influence from an open pit and defines zone budgets for the pit and drainage network.

June 19, 2025

Leaf Area Calculation from Drone Ortophotos with Python and Scikit-Learn - Tutorial

June 19, 2025/ Saul Montoya

Besides counting crops we can also delineate plants and calculate its leaf area by using methods that fit open or closed splines to lines or edges in an image. These methods are implemented on the Python library Scikit-Image and applied for the delineation of tree canopies over a geospatial raster image. The exercise is developed in a Jupyter notebook and covers all steps from image import, apply grayscale, explore gaussian filter, calculate active contour and export polygons as ESRI shapefile. Finally, there is an histogram generation to determine the distribution of leaf area from plants.

June 11, 2025

Geospatial Crop Recognition from Drone Orthophotos with Python and HatariTools - Tutorial

June 11, 2025/ Saul Montoya

Spatial analysis and machine learning sometimes require massive coding in order to achieve decent results such as identifying plants from a drone orthophoto. We wanted to create a simple workflow for beginner and intermediate Python users to work with these libraries without much pain or frustration. This tutorial has the complete procedure to use a new Python package called hatariTools that recognizes plants from an orthophoto based on sample points and creates intermediate plots and identifies plants as point shapefiles.

June 05, 2025

Representation of Flow Direction Vectors from a Model Muse / MODFLOW6 model with mf6Voronoi - Tutorial

June 05, 2025/ Saul Montoya

This tutorial show the complete workflow to determine flow directions from a MODFLOW model done with Model Muse with the Mf6Voronoi utility FlowVectorGenerator that represent flow direction vectors in a Matplotlib figure. The function works not only with normal Modflow6 Dis models like the generated by Model Muse but also with Voronoi based Modflow6 Disv models. There is a capability to insert background images and other functionalities, however the styling options are closed in order to preserve the artistic style of the plot.

May 30, 2025

Land Cover Dynamic Analysis for Climate Change Impact Assessment with Python and Rasterio - Tutorial

May 30, 2025/ Saul Montoya

This is an applied of land cover dynamic analysis over some regions of Turkey for the evaluation of land aridification and land abandonment due to climate change on the last decade. The case covers all the steps in Python with related geospatial libraries to process Sentinel 2 images for an area of study with considerations of hydrological conditions and reduction of outlier values.

May 29, 2025

Multiple parametrization of Phreeqc simulations with Python and hatariTools - Tutorial

May 29, 2025/ Saul Montoya

Applied example for Phreeqc simulation with multiple parameter values with Python and its new library hatariTools. This example explores the simulation and analysis of calcite from different values of PCO2(g) on a Jupyter Notebook and creates a graphical representation of the Calcite molality vs PCO2(g) in Matplotlib.

May 23, 2025

Create 3D objects (Vtks) from a groundwater model in Model Muse with mf6Voronoi - Tutorial

May 23, 2025/ Saul Montoya

Model Muse is an awesome tool for groundwater model construction and output visualization, however its graphical capabilities are quite limited. Since we are always on the search of bringing groundwater model ‘close’ to the stakeholder, normal audience and coming generations, there is a special interest in providing complementary tools for the normal workflow with Model Muse and Modflow6 that allows the normal user to create awesome 3D objects representing:

May 16, 2025

Simulation of open pit inflows using MODFLOW 6 and mv6Voronoi - Tutorial

May 16, 2025/ Saul Montoya

This applied case presents a step-by-step methodology to simulate groundwater inflow into an open pit using MODFLOW 6—the groundwater flow modeling engine developed by the USGS—in combination with mv6Voronoi, a tool that generates Voronoi meshes.

May 14, 2025

Paraview and mf6Voronoi for Modflow 6 model 3D visualization - Tutorial

May 14, 2025/ Saul Montoya

Because an image is worth a thousand words, and 3D visualization is key for explaining, sharing, and analyzing groundwater model parameters, boundaries and results. The Python package mf6Voronoi offers a structured workflow to generate 3D spatial files on VTK format for the representation of the model parameters, water table, head distribution and others that can be plotted on Paraview. This is an applied case of 3D representation for a andean basin groundwater flow model where we are going to explore the relevant tools and options of mf6Voronoi and Paraview.

May 9, 2024

Diploma in Groundwater Modeling with Python and FloPy - Asynchronous

FloPy is the Python library that builds and executes MODFLOW models; this library has been enhanced to provide full support of MODFLOW 6 with most of its recent development is related to functionality for MODFLOW 6, tools to use vector and raster spatial data and common plotting and export functionality.

May 8, 2024

25% Off: Diploma in Applied Groundwater Modeling with MODFLOW and Model Muse - Asynchronous

We have designed a complete program on MODFLOW with Model Muse that ranges from the essential topics in flow and transport modeling to applied cases of regional modeling, infrastructure projects, and seawater intrusion. MODFLOW with Model Muse is a recent open-source software that provides various tools for simulating the groundwater flow regime in different environments.

30% Off: Program in Hydrological Modeling with SWAT+ and QGIS - Asynchronous

This program is designed to provide systematical learning from the most basic and general topics to intermediate and advanced topics, allowing the student to understand the various steps in developing hydrological models using the SWAT+ interface for QGIS. This program has a series of theoretical and practical concepts that allow the student to process spatial data, manage meteorological databases, build hydrological models, develop sensitivity analyses, and perform manual and automatic calibrations using versatile tools such as SWAT+ Toolbox, SQLite, and Python.

September 9, 2026

Benchmarking mf6Voronoi v0.0.38: Parallel Performance, Scaling Limits, and Mesh Refinement Dynamics

With the upcoming release of mf6Voronoi v0.0.38, optimizing mesh generation workflows remains a top priority. Constructing complex unstructured Voronoi grids for MODFLOW 6 can become computationally intensive as spatial resolution increases. To address this challenge, parallel execution capabilities were introduced into mf6Voronoi leveraging dask-geopandas.

August 20, 2026

Geopandas tools for the representation and analysis of water chemistry data - Tutorial

This tutorial explores a powerful interactive GeoPandas tool that facilitates the visual analysis and representation of water chemistry data. Through this Python workflow, you can display sampling points over satellite imagery and various basemaps, map concentrations using automatic color scales, and adjust marker sizes based on analyzed parameters. This direct integration allows you to customize the variables displayed on hover, streamlining data evaluation for baseline studies or water pollution diagnostics.

July 23, 2026

How to Interpolate Over 2 Million Points Quickly and Without Freezing - Tutorial

Interpolating large volumes of spatial data through the QGIS graphical interface is often a headache: the process takes too long or, even worse, the program freezes while consuming all system resources. In this tutorial, we will show you how to interpolate nearly 2 million points in less than two minutes using the OSGeo4W Shell and GDAL commands with the IDW method. By creating a virtual layer file (.vrt), you will learn a highly efficient, reliable, and lightweight workflow that enables you to work with millions of data points without being constrained by the limits of the GUI.

July 17, 2026

Plotting Water Surface Elevation from a 2D HEC-RAS Model using Python - Tutorial

This tutorial demonstrates how to accurately and efficiently extract the water surface elevation at a specific point from a HEC-RAS 2D unsteady flow model using Python in Jupyter Lab. Since water levels vary across the mesh and native software tools can limit automation, the author teaches how to open HDF5 output files (.hdf), load a point shapefile using GeoPandas, and apply a geospatial index K-d tree to locate the nearest computational cell. Finally, the time series data is processed to generate a water level hydrograph, which is essential for hydrogeological model calibration.

July 2, 2026

Advanced Crop Water Demand Modeling: Simulating ETo, ETc, and ETa with Python and pyfao56 - Tutorial

estimations of crop water requirements. This applied case offers a deep dive into modeling crop evapotranspiration using the standardized FAO-56 Dual Crop Coefficient methodology, implemented programmatically through Python.

Using a real-world case study of olive cultivation (Olea europaea) in the hyper-arid coastal desert of Bella Unión (Arequipa, Peru), we will demonstrate how to build an end-to-end hydrological data pipeline. Participants will learn how to integrate spatial data, process satellite-derived and weather station climate parameters, define soil-water-crop constraints, and simulate complex deficit drip-irrigation schedules.

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