MODFLOW 2011 Conference

There will be another MODFLOW conference at Colorado School of Mines June 6-8, 2011 in Golden Colorado. I always enjoy this conference and recommend it to anyone interested in MODFLOW and groundwater modeling in general.

After the conference I will be holding a 2-day seminar at the Golden Hotel. The seminar will be Thursday and Friday, June 9 & 10. This seminar will be different from my usual seminars and Webinars in that it will cover a wide range of topics. John Doherty will be presenting the latest enhancements to PEST. Sorab Panday will be discussing his new unstructured version of MODFLOW. And I will be covering the new features in Groundwater Vistas 6.

Please note that my seminar is not an official part of the conference so if you want to sign up, just send me an email. The cost will be $450 and limited to 25 participants. You do not have to attend the conference to attend this course.

Many of you know that Groundwater Vistas Version 6 is coming out soon, but please don't send me an email asking for the release date, list of features, cost, etc. All I can say at this point is that it will be released well in advance of the conference. You will hear more from me in this blog and via emails from our web site as we get closer to the release.

Using Multiple Recharge Arrays

I have had a few requests over the years to allow multiple recharge arrays in Groundwater Vistas. Unfortunately this has some serious memory ramifications because Groundwater Vistas stores all recharge and ET transient data in memory. Also, MODFLOW only has one recharge package.

There are times, though, when it is advantageous to be able to track recharge from different sources separately. To help with these situations, we have added a new feature to Groundwater Vistas under Props|Import|Matrix. A checkbox labeled "Add this matrix to existing property data" allows you to keep recharge arrays in matrix format outside of Groundwater Vistas. To assemble a final recharge distribution, you just import all of them using this "add" option. The one limitation is that the property (e.g. recharge) must be stored using the matrix format in GV and not the zone database format.

With this option, you can establish a recharge distribution and save it to a matrix file (Props|Export|Matrix). After all recharge sources have been accounted for in separate files, you simply create a GV file with all recharge sources added together.

To help use this feature with Pest, we have created a utility program that can add recharge matrices together after applying multiplication factors to all or part of the matrix file. Using this utility requires you to make changes to the Pest files outside of Groundwater Vistas but we can provide this utility to you if you need it.

Groundwater Vistas 5.48 Build 2 Update

Here are the latest changes to Groundwater Vistas between 5.47 Build 9 and the current one which is 5.49 build 2:

Enhancements:
- Added the rclose variable to the PCG4 solver input for MODFLOW-Surfact

- Flow Direction calibration targets are now functional (note that the angle for flow direction targets is the mathematical angle where zero is East, 90 if North, etc.). These work both in Groundwater Vistas and in Pest.

- Added a range in reach numbers for use in endpoint analysis (previously only a single reach number could be entered for the purposes of endpoint analysis)

- The "no transport" option was added for use in SEAWAT2000. With this option only the density or concentration is specified for each cell. SEAWAT2000 will then use this density as a given and not run any transport simulations with MT3D.

Minor Changes & Bug Fixes:
- The gage package was not being written for MODFLOW-Surfact

- Changed the format of values in the TMP1 Package to exponential

- Simplified Boundary Condition editing was not changing transient values of Kv

- In the RSF4 Package, the IRCH array was being written out of order (note there are errors in the Surfact manual about this)

- Velocity vectors in cross-section could potentially be displayed with the wrong color indicating upward flow with the downward color (and vice-versa)

- A memory error was discovered when exporting the HSU report for mass balance. (It seemed to only happen in Windows XP).