Modeling groundwater with ocean and river interaction

Abstract

We develop and implement the groundwater model, Saturated/Unsaturated Flow and Transport in 3D (SUFT3D), to integrate water quantity/quality data and simulations with models of other hydrologic cycle components, namely, rivers and the ocean. This work was done as part of the Sea Air Land Modeling Operational Network (SALMON) project supported by the IBM International Foundation through its Environmental Research Program. The first research steps, presented here, address the simulation of typical hydrologic conditions to demonstrate SUFT3D's effectiveness and accuracy. The theory behind the modeling of seawater intrusion and groundwater-river interaction is summarized along with the numerical methods and characteristics of SUFT3D. The code was applied to different, increasingly complex scenarios: confined to unconfined conditions, local to regional scale, homogeneous to increasing heterogeneity, two- to three-dimensional. Of particular interest were the impacts of different boundary conditions and influence of river interactions on seawater intrusion. Results are illustrated, discussed, and compared, when possible, to those in the literature. Simulating groundwater exchange between both the river and the ocean has provided interesting results that better depict the dynamics of flow and transport in coastal zone groundwater systems