MODFLOW 6 Lab: Customizing for Geothermal, Flow, and Transport Modeling

Empowering Modelers to Extend the Functionality of MODFLOW 6

Infos

Motivation

MODFLOW 6 provides a powerful tool for modeling of flow, transport, and geothermal processes in the subsurface. Some modeling tasks may be difficult to solve with the standard workflow. For example, the riverbed conductance can depend on the flow direction, i.e. if the river is gaining or loosing water to the aquifer. Currently, MODFLOW cannot handle direction-dependent values for riverbed conductance. But pymf6 can extend MODFLOW with a dynamic riverbed conductance that is different for periods of gaining and loosing. Only a few lines of Python code are needed. Furthermore, other models such as analytic flow models or reactive models such as PHREEQC can be coupled with reasonable effort. New boundary conditions with a strong technical component can be added. For example, such a dynamic boundary condition could take the technical specification of a subsurface heat exchanges into account.

Target group

Groundwater modelers including students, researchers, consultants, administrative staff of environmental agencies

What you will learn

You will work with pymf6 from the beginning on. The workshop includes:

• Running MODFLOW 6 via pymf6 within a Jupyter Notebook
• Basics of working with pymf6
• Inspecting internal MODFLOW values during model run time
• Use case flow: Controlling the well withdraw based on a target groundwater level
• Use case flow: Dynamic river bed conductance for gaining and loosing river sections
• Use case transport: Optimize the pumping rate of hydraulic barrier for containing a contamination
• Use case geothermal: Extend MODFLOW with a thermal Cauchy boundary condition
• Outlook: Coupling analytic solutions to reduce model size
• Outlook: Reactive transport modeling with pymf6
• Q&A: Ask questions about your model customization needs and get answers from author of pymf6

Instructors

• Dr.-Ing. Mike Müller (hydrocomputing): developer of pymf6
• Lúcia Pedrosa (TUBAF): tester of pymf6, developer of pymf6-based dynamic boundary conditions

Prerequisites

• Please bring your laptop with your opeartions system of choice
• Software installation required. We work with an online system. An internet browser is all you need.
• Knowledge about MODFLOW 6: You should be comfortable using MODFLOW 6 and have applicable knowledge of groundwater modeling in general.
• Python knowledge is advantages: Basic programming skills in Python are useful, but not required. The workshop covers the necessary Python features needed to use pymf6.