Forecasting and assessing the groundwater status of Gotvand and Aghili plains in different water resource management scenarios

Iran is an arid country, and only small percent of its water demand is met by rainfall. At present, about 55 percent of Iran’s water being supplied by aquifers and 45 percent from surface water. Population growth, joint with economic development and rapid growth in industry and farming, has caused a vast increase in demand for water in Iran. But the slow recharging aquifers have not been able to cope with new condition. In this context, the importance of control and optimum utilization of groundwater has been realized by hydro geologists and groundwater models because of their high effectiveness and less expenses than other methods have been developed and used by hydro geologists as an water source management tool. For this purpose, the quantitative model of the groundwater of Gotvand - Aghili plain, with area of 342 square kilometers, which is located on northeast of Shushtar, is prepared. MODFLOW2000 of GMS (Groundwater Modeling System), was used to build a groundwater flow system under different stresses for one year period (2007-2008) under unsteady condition. First, a conceptual model was setup using simple GIS tools. Then, the numerical model was generated and, transient data from observation wells was used to calibrate the model. Following this, the transient model was validated by using observation data for the period 2008-2009. Then, the completed MODFLOW model was ready for simulation runs. The results for the various scenarios including predicting the status of water level in next 5 years, drilling new production wells and predicting the status of groundwater under drought and rainy year, 10% increasing in well water exploiting and 25% decreasing in well water exploiting conditions was analyzed in Gotvand - Aghili plain.

Forecasting and assessing the groundwater status of Gotvand and Aghili plains in different water resource management scenarios Keywords:

Gotvand - Aghili , Modeling , MODFLOW , Management , GMS.