4. Introduction to Modeling Environments

4. Introduction to Modeling Environments#

Scope#

  • Overview of Jupyter Notebooks and Spreadsheets for analytical modeling

  • Introduction to MODFLOW6 and FLOPY (Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport)

  • Introduction to VS2DI (Variably Saturated Fluid Flow and Solute Transport)

  • Comparison of analytical and numerical approaches

Calculators and Spreadsheets#

These tools are useful for most of the 1D situations (with some programming 2D can be addressed using spreadsheets).

In most analytical solutions you will need some special functions:

  • erf() error function

  • erfc() complimentary error function

  • besseli(,) bessel function type i

  • besselj(,) bessel function type j

  • Ei() exponential integral

There are a few more, but these handle many of the cases. In Excel they are part of the Analysis Add-in, similarily with LibreOffice use Insert/Function/AddIn and a pull down menu appears with; alternatively they can be programmed using VBA and polynomial approximations to the functions.

Specialized Software#

More complex cases usually will require special software:

  • MODFLOW

  • MODPATH

  • MT3D

  • USGS-MOC (2D)

  • Chemflow-2000 are envisioned in this course.

In many instances the output must be post processed to make graphical representations.

Note

We will probably use USGS-MOC, and output postprocessing for this course.

References#

  1. MODFLOW/MT3D

  2. MODFLOW/MT3D Python Wrappers

  3. USGS-MOC

  4. Chemflow-2000