Estimation of effective hydrogeological parameters in heterogeneous and anisotropic aquifers

Obtaining reasonable hydrological input parameters is a key challenge in groundwater modeling. Analysis of temporal evolution during pump-induced drawdown is one common approach used to estimate the effective transmissivity and storage coefficients in a heterogeneous aquifer. In this study, we propose a Modified Tabu search Method (MTM), an improvement drawn from an alliance between the Tabu Search (TS) and the Adjoint State Method (ASM) developed by . The latter is employed to estimate effective parameters for anisotropic, heterogeneous aquifers. MTM is validated by several numerical pumping tests. Comparisons are made to other well-known techniques, such as the type-curve method (TCM) and the straight-line method (SLM), to provide insight into the challenge of determining the most effective parameter for an anisotropic, heterogeneous aquifer. The results reveal that MTM can efficiently obtain the best representative and effective aquifer parameters in terms of the least mean square errors of the drawdown estimations. The use of MTM may involve less artificial errors than occur with TCM and SLM, and lead to better solutions. Therefore, effective transmissivity is more likely to be comprised of the geometric mean of all transmissivities within the cone of depression based on a precise estimation of MTM. Further investigation into the applicability of MTM shows that a higher level of heterogeneity in an aquifer can induce an uncertainty in estimations, while the changes in correlation length will affect the accuracy of MTM only once the degree of heterogeneity has also risen.