ModelMuse Version 5.0: Software Release

ModelMuse is a graphical user interface for several different groundwater modeling programs. ModelMuse has been updated to generate the input files for the parameter estimation software suite PEST when used with MODFLOW or SUTRA models, run PEST-based parameter estimation, and display the updated model inputs after parameter estimation. The PEST input files can also be used with PEST++ version 5 (White and others, 2020).
Parameter estimation typically requires definition of parameters adjusted during calibration and observations for assessing calibration quality. After a parameter has been defined in ModelMuse, it can be applied to all or part of a model data set. Pilot points – a parameterization device that facilitates higher levels of parameterization – can be used to assign spatially variable distributions of model inputs. Parameters can be applied to temporally varying features such as boundary conditions either by applying them to all the values in a series in one step or by applying separate parameters to individual members of a series. ModelMuse allows definition of many different sorts of observations from a variety of model output files. For MODFLOW 6 and SUTRA models, new options were added to ModelMuse to allow it to display the changed input after parameter estimation is complete. For MODFLOW-2005 and MODFLOW-NWT models, ModelMuse can import an entire model to allow it to be visualized. An example illustrates the use of PEST with a MODFLOW 6 model.