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.