Water Models (water + models)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Review of the Integrated Groundwater and Surface-Water Model (IGSM)

GROUND WATER, Issue 2 2003
Eric M. LaBolle
Development of the finite-element-based Integrated Groundwater and Surface-Water Model (IGSM) began in the 1970s. Its popularity grew in the early 1990s with its application to California's Central Valley Groundwater Surface-Water Model in support of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act. Since that time, IGSM has been applied by federal, state, and local agencies to model a number of major basins in California. Our review of the recently released version 5.0 of IGSM reveals a solution methodology that deviates from established solution techniques, potentially compromising its reliability under many circumstances. One difficulty occurs because of the semi-explicit time discretization used. Combined with the fixed monthly time step of IGSM, this approach can prevent applications from accurately converging when using parameter values typically found in nature. Additionally, IGSM fails to properly couple and simultaneously solve ground water and surface water models with appropriate mass balance and head convergence under the reasonable conditions considered herein. As a result, IGSM-predicted streamflow is error prone, and errors could exceed 100%. IGSM does not inform the user that there may be a convergence problem with the solution, but instead generally reports good mass balance. Although our review touches on only a few aspects of the code, which exceeds 17,000 lines, our experience is that similar problems arise in other parts of IGSM. Review and examples demonstrate the potential consequences of using the solution methods in IGSM for the prediction, planning, and management of water resources, and provide perspective on the roles of standards and code validation in ground water modeling. [source]


A Model of Cells as Practical Approach to Simulate Spring Flow in the Itxina Karstic Aquifer, Basque Country, Spain

GROUND WATER, Issue 3 2001
J. Gárfias Soliz
The aim of this study is to apply a parsimonious hydrologic model to the Itxina karstic aquifer that can predict changes in discharge resulting from variable inputs (recharge). The Itxina Aquifer was divided into four cells corresponding to different recharge areas. Each cell was treated as a tank to characterize the conditions within the cell. In the model, when the reservoir boundaries coincide with the position of the siphons, the signal simulated is sensitive to input pulses of the recharge. This supports the hypothesis that the siphons are the controlling mechanism in the flow system of the aquifer. The good agreement between predicted and measured discharges demonstrates the ability of the model to simulate the flow in the Itxina Aquifer. These results demonstrated that the hydraulic conductivity increases downstream within the aquifer. The hydraulic conductivities obtained by calibration varied between 4.2 × 10,3 m/s upstream of the aquifer, 6.0 × 10,2 m/s in the central region, and 9.5 × 10,1 m/s in the lower region of the aquifer. These values seem reasonable because the underground features in the principal caves show that the density of caves increases downstream in the Itxina Aquifer. The simple representation of the system produced results comparable to traditional ground water models with fewer data requirements and calibration parameters. [source]


Unstructured finite volume discretization of two-dimensional depth-averaged shallow water equations with porosity

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN FLUIDS, Issue 8 2010
L. Cea
Abstract This paper deals with the numerical discretization of two-dimensional depth-averaged models with porosity. The equations solved by these models are similar to the classic shallow water equations, but include additional terms to account for the effect of small-scale impervious obstructions which are not resolved by the numerical mesh because their size is smaller or similar to the average mesh size. These small-scale obstructions diminish the available storage volume on a given region, reduce the effective cross section for the water to flow, and increase the head losses due to additional drag forces and turbulence. In shallow water models with porosity these effects are modelled introducing an effective porosity parameter in the mass and momentum conservation equations, and including an additional drag source term in the momentum equations. This paper presents and compares two different numerical discretizations for the two-dimensional shallow water equations with porosity, both of them are high-order schemes. The numerical schemes proposed are well-balanced, in the sense that they preserve naturally the exact hydrostatic solution without the need of high-order corrections in the source terms. At the same time they are able to deal accurately with regions of zero porosity, where the water cannot flow. Several numerical test cases are used in order to verify the properties of the discretization schemes proposed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Incorporating spatially variable bottom stress and Coriolis force into 2D, a posteriori, unstructured mesh generation for shallow water models

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN FLUIDS, Issue 3 2009
D. Michael Parrish
Abstract An enhanced version of our localized truncation error analysis with complex derivatives (LTEA,CD ) a posteriori approach to computing target element sizes for tidal, shallow water flow, LTEA+CD , is applied to the Western North Atlantic Tidal model domain. The LTEA + CD method utilizes localized truncation error estimates of the shallow water momentum equations and builds upon LTEA and LTEA,CD-based techniques by including: (1) velocity fields from a nonlinear simulation with complete constituent forcing; (2) spatially variable bottom stress; and (3) Coriolis force. Use of complex derivatives in this case results in a simple truncation error expression, and the ability to compute localized truncation errors using difference equations that employ only seven to eight computational points. The compact difference molecules allow the computation of truncation error estimates and target element sizes throughout the domain, including along the boundary; this fact, along with inclusion of locally variable bottom stress and Coriolis force, constitute significant advancements beyond the capabilities of LTEA. The goal of LTEA + CD is to drive the truncation error to a more uniform, domain-wide value by adjusting element sizes (we apply LTEA + CD by re-meshing the entire domain, not by moving nodes). We find that LTEA + CD can produce a mesh that is comprised of fewer nodes and elements than an initial high-resolution mesh while performing as well as the initial mesh when considering the resynthesized tidal signals (elevations). Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Flux and source term discretization in two-dimensional shallow water models with porosity on unstructured grids

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN FLUIDS, Issue 3 2006
Vincent Guinot
Abstract Two-dimensional shallow water models with porosity appear as an interesting path for the large-scale modelling of floodplains with urbanized areas. The porosity accounts for the reduction in storage and in the exchange sections due to the presence of buildings and other structures in the floodplain. The introduction of a porosity into the two-dimensional shallow water equations leads to modified expressions for the fluxes and source terms. An extra source term appears in the momentum equation. This paper presents a discretization of the modified fluxes using a modified HLL Riemann solver on unstructured grids. The source term arising from the gradients in the topography and in the porosity is treated in an upwind fashion so as to enhance the stability of the solution. The Riemann solver is tested against new analytical solutions with variable porosity. A new formulation is proposed for the macroscopic head loss in urban areas. An application example is presented, where the large scale model with porosity is compared to a refined flow model containing obstacles that represent a schematic urban area. The quality of the results illustrates the potential usefulness of porosity-based shallow water models for large scale floodplain simulations. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


High order interpolation methods for semi-Lagrangian models of mobile-bed hydrodynamics on Cartesian grids with cut cells

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN FLUIDS, Issue 10-11 2005
Giorgio Rosatti
Abstract High order approximation methods based on radial basis functions are applied to the extension of semi-Lagrangian shallow water models to staggered Cartesian meshes with cut boundary cells. The accuracy and efficiency of the resulting semi-Lagrangian method is demonstrated by test cases simulating open channel flow. The derivative reconstruction provided by radial basis function interpolators is also employed successfully in the discretization of sediment transport models for mobile bed river flow. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


A 2D implicit time-marching algorithm for shallow water models based on the generalized wave continuity equation

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN FLUIDS, Issue 3 2004
Kendra M. Dresback
Abstract This paper builds upon earlier work that developed and evaluated a 1D predictor,corrector time-marching algorithm for wave equation models and extends it to 2D. Typically, the generalized wave continuity equation (GWCE) utilizes a three time-level semi-implicit scheme centred at k, and the momentum equation uses a two time-level scheme centred at k+12. It has been shown that in highly non-linear applications, the algorithm becomes unstable at even moderate Courant numbers. This work implements and analyses an implicit treatment of the non-linear terms through the use of an iterative time-marching algorithm in the two-dimensional framework. Stability results show at least an eight-fold increase in the maximum time step, depending on the domain. Studies also examined the sensitivity of the G parameter (a numerical weighting parameter in the GWCE) with results showing the greatest increase in stability occurs when 1,G/,max,10, a range that coincides with the recommended range to minimize errors. Convergence studies indicate an increase in temporal accuracy from first order to second order, while overall error is less than the original algorithm, even at higher time steps. Finally, a parallel implementation of the new algorithm shows that it scales well. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


A new shallow water model with polynomial dependence on depth

MATHEMATICAL METHODS IN THE APPLIED SCIENCES, Issue 5 2008
José M. Rodríguez
Abstract In this paper, we study two-dimensional Euler equations in a domain with small depth. With this aim, we introduce a small non-dimensional parameter , related to the depth and we use asymptotic analysis to study what happens when , becomes small. We obtain a model for , small that, after coming back to the original domain, gives us a shallow water model that considers the possibility of a non-constant bottom, and the horizontal velocity has a dependence on z introduced by the vorticity when it is not zero. This represents an interesting novelty with respect to shallow water models found in the literature. We stand out that we do not need to make a priori assumptions about velocity or pressure behaviour to obtain the model. The new model is able to approximate the solutions to Euler equations with dependence on z (reobtaining the same velocities profile), whereas the classic model just obtains the average velocity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


,18O of water vapour, evapotranspiration and the sites of leaf water evaporation in a soybean canopy

PLANT CELL & ENVIRONMENT, Issue 9 2008
LISA R. WELP
ABSTRACT Stable isotopes in water have the potential to diagnose changes in the earth's hydrological budget in response to climate change and land use change. However, there have been few measurements in the vapour phase. Here, we present high-frequency measurements of oxygen isotopic compositions of water vapour (,v) and evapotranspiration (,ET) above a soybean canopy using the tunable diode laser (TDL) technique for the entire 2006 growing season in Minnesota, USA. We observed a large variability in surface ,v from the daily to the seasonal timescales, largely explained by Rayleigh processes, but also influenced by vertical atmospheric mixing, local evapotranspiration (ET) and dew formation. We used ,ET measurements to calculate the isotopic composition at the sites of evaporative enrichment in leaves (,L,e) and compared that with the commonly used steady-state prediction (,L,s). There was generally a good agreement averaged over the season, but larger differences on individual days. We also found that vertical variability in relative humidity and temperature associated with canopy structure must be addressed in canopy-scale leaf water models. Finally, we explored this data set for direct evidence of the Péclet effect. [source]