Richard G Niswonger (Former Employee)

The dependency of surface- or groundwater flows and aquifer hydraulic properties on dewatering-induced layer deformation is not available in the USGS's groundwater model MODFLOW. A new integrated hydrologic model, MODFLOW-OWHM, formulates this dependency by coupling mesh deformation with aquifer transmissivity and storage and by linking land subsidence/uplift with deformation-dependent...

Biochemical reactions that occur in the hyporheic zone are highly dependent on the time solutes that are in contact with sediments of the riverbed. In this investigation, we developed a 2-D longitudinal flow and solute-transport model to estimate the spatial distribution of mean residence time in the hyporheic zone. The flow model was calibrated using observations of temperature and...

Some of the world’s key agricultural production systems face big challenges to both water quantity and quality due to shallow groundwater that results from long-term intensive irrigation, namely waterlogging and salinity, water losses, and environmental problems. This paper focuses on water quantity issues, presenting finite-difference groundwater models developed to describe shallow...

A numerical model was developed that is capable of simulating multispecies reactive solute transport in variably saturated porous media. This model consists of a modified version of the reactive transport model RT3D (Reactive Transport in 3 Dimensions) that is linked to the Unsaturated-Zone Flow (UZF1) package and MODFLOW. Referred to as UZF-RT3D, the model is tested against published...

A new version of MODFLOW, called MODFLOW–USG (for UnStructured Grid), was developed to support a wide variety of structured and unstructured grid types, including nested grids and grids based on prismatic triangles, rectangles, hexagons, and other cell shapes. Flexibility in grid design can be used to focus resolution along rivers and around wells, for example, or to subdiscretize...

The U.S. Geological Survey Cascade Routing Tool (CRT) is a computer application for watershed models that include the coupled Groundwater and Surface-water FLOW model, GSFLOW, and the Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS). CRT generates output to define cascading surface and shallow subsurface flow paths for grid-based model domains. CRT requires a land-surface elevation for each...

The MT3DMS groundwater solute transport model was modified to simulate solute transport in the unsaturated zone by incorporating the unsaturated-zone flow (UZF1) package developed for MODFLOW. The modified MT3DMS code uses a volume-averaged approach in which Lagrangian-based UZF1 fluid fluxes and storage changes are mapped onto a fixed grid. Referred to as UZF-MT3DMS, the linked model...

Previous studies indicate predominantly increasing trends in precipitation across the Western United States, while at the same time, historical streamflow records indicate decreasing summertime streamflow and 25th percentile annual flows. These opposing trends could be viewed as paradoxical, given that several studies suggest that increased annual precipitation will equate to increased...

Various approaches have been proposed to manage the nonlinearities associated with the unconfined flow equation and to simulate perched groundwater conditions using the MODFLOW family of codes. The approaches comprise a variety of numerical techniques to prevent dry cells from becoming inactive and to achieve a stable solution focused on formulations of the unconfined, partially...

We describe an approach for calibrating a two-dimensional (2-D) flow model of hyporheic exchange using observations of temperature and pressure to estimate hydraulic and thermal properties. A longitudinal 2-D heat and flow model was constructed for a riffle-pool sequence to simulate flow paths and flux rates for variable discharge conditions. A uniform random sampling approach was used...

Groundwater exchanges with lakes resulting from cyclical wet and dry climate extremes maintain lake levels in the environment in ways that are not well understood, in part because they remain difficult to simulate. To better understand the atypical groundwater interactions with lakes caused by climatic extremes, an original conceptual approach is introduced using MODFLOW-2005 and a...

No abstract available.