No abstract

No abstract

Brackish to saline groundwater in arid environments encourages the development and sustainability of inland freshwater lenses (IFLs). While these freshwater resources supply much-needed drinking water throughout the Arabian Peninsula and other drylands, little is understood about their sustainability. This study presents a numerical model using the SEAWAT programming code (i.e., MODFLOW and the Modular Three-Dimensional Multispecies Transport Model (MT3DMS)) to simulate IFL transient evolution. The numerical model is based on a physical laboratory model and calibrated using results from simulations conducted in a previous study of the Raudhatain IFL in northern Kuwait. Data from three previously conducted physical model simulations were evaluated against the corresponding numerical model simulations. The hydraulic conductivities in the horizontal and vertical directions were successfully optimized to minimize the objective function of the numerical model simulations. The numerical model matched observed IFL water levels at four locations through time, as well as IFL thicknesses and lengths (R2 = 0.89, 0.94, 0.85). Predicted lens degradation times corresponded to the observed lenses, which demonstrated the utility of numerical models and physical models to assess IFL geometry and position. Improved understanding of IFL dynamics provides water-resource exploration and development opportunities in drylands throughout the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere with similar environmental settings.

Options for hydrogeology textbooks are limited, with most relying on texts that are out-of-print or overly focused on mathematical representations. Hydrogeologic Properties of Earth Materials and Principles of Groundwater Flow by William W. Woessner and Eileen P. Poeter is an option that would be well received by students in various quantitative disciplines interested in the fundamental principles of groundwater. The book covers most of the basic groundwater concepts and their respective mathematical representations (e.g., Darcy's law, threedimensional flow), albeit more succinctly relative to traditional hydrogeology textbooks.The foreword of the book states that it is an expansion of Chapter 2 of Groundwater (Freeze and Cherry 1979). From cover to cover, Woessner and Poeter (2020) is 205 pages, with the primary content focused over a much shorter length. Without reading the foreword, one might conclude the scope of the book to be much broader than required for a quantitative hydrogeology course, but at close examination, most of the pertinent concepts are found. The explanations in each section are succinct and the delivery of content efficient, including a brief section on the governing equations for groundwater flow and the Laplace equation. While the book achieves the breadth required for a thorough quantitative hydrogeology review, several topics are not covered, including detailed quantitative approaches on drawdown and pumping tests, contaminant transport, and water chemistry. The scope of the text is narrowed to focus solely on the physical aspects of how porous media store, yield, and transmit water and their relationships to groundwater flow systems.The progression of chapters is structured in a manner that one might expect, beginning with the definition of groundwater and ending with regional examples of flow systems and potentiometric-surface maps. There are 13

No abstract