A review of recent studies on groundwater modeling methods for heterogeneous carbonate aquifers
2019
Yoshimoto, S. | Tsuchihara, T. | Shirahata, K. | Nakazato, H. | Ishida, S.
Groundwater flow and solute transport in karstified carbonate aquifers show their characteristics strongly affected by the conduit networks. In the recent studies, heterogeneity of the carbonate aquifers such as fractures and conduits has been expressed into the distributed models for groundwater simulation as the following two manners: A different value of hydraulic conductivity has been given for each of divided zones of the analysis domain in the equivalent porous medium (EPM) models; and the conduit flow has been expressed mathematically as hydraulic equations and incorporated into the EPM models. It has been pointed out that the EPM assumption has a difficulty to appropriately reproduce solute movement driven by the turbulent flow via conduits. On the other hand, models considering conduit flows as hydraulic expressions can lead to more realistic models, but spatial information of the conduit networks is indispensable for accurate calculation. For carbonate aquifers in the Ryukyu Islands of Japan, groundwater flow and saltwater-freshwater interaction can be modelled with EPM for areas without obvious conduit network and also with application of the hydraulic conduit flow programs for areas where major caves exist.
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