Time to reach near-steady state in large aquifers

P. Rousseau-Gueutin (1, 2) , A. J. Love (3, 1) , G. Vasseur (4) , N. I. Robinson (1) , C. T. Simmons (1, 3) , G. De Marsily (4)

1 School of the Environment [Adelaide]
2 EHESP - École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique [EHESP]
3 School of Civil Engineering and National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training
4 UPMC - Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6

A new analytical solution of the flow equation has been developed to estimate the time to reach a near-equilibrium state in mixed aquifers, i.e., having unconfined and confined portions, following a large hydraulic perturbation. Near-equilibrium is defined as the time for an initial aquifer perturbation to dissipate by an average 95% across the aquifer. The new solution has been obtained by solving the flow system of a simplified conceptual model of a mixed aquifer using Laplace transforms. The conceptual model is based on two assumptions: (1) the groundwater flow can be reduced to a horizontal 1-D problem and (2) the transmissivity, a function of the saturated thickness, is assumed constant on the unconfined portion. This new solution depends on the storativity of the unconfined portion, the lengths of the unconfined and confined portions and the transmissivity, assumed to be constant and equal in both portions of the mixed aquifer. This solution was then tested and validated against a numerical flow model, where the variations of the saturated thickness and therefore variations of the transmissivity were either ignored, or properly modeled. The agreement between the results from the new solution and those from the numerical model is good, validating the use of this new solution to estimate the time to reach near-equilibrium in mixed aquifers. This solution for mixed aquifers, as well as the solutions for a fully confined or fully unconfined aquifer, has been used to estimate the time to reach near-equilibrium in 13 large aquifers in the world. For those different aquifers, the time to reach near-equilibrium ranges between 0.7 kyr to 2.4 x 10(7) kyr. These results suggest that the present hydraulic heads in these aquifers are typically a mixture of responses induced from current and past hydrologic conditions and thus climate conditions. For some aquifers, the modern hydraulic heads may in fact depend upon hydrologic conditions resulting from several past climate cycles.

Mots clés: analytical solution; mixed aquifers; time constant; transient state

Domaines: Hydrologie

P. Rousseau-Gueutin, A. J. Love, G. Vasseur, N. I. Robinson, C. T. Simmons, et al.. Time to reach near-steady state in large aquifers. Water Resources Research, 2013, 49 (10), pp.6893-6908. ⟨10.1002/wrcr.20534⟩. ⟨hal-01196253⟩