A Generalized Predictive Model of Water Table Fluctuations in Anisotropic Aquifer Due to Intermittently Applied Time-Varying Recharge from Multiple Basins

Mathematical models play a key role in assessing the future behavior of a groundwater system in response to various schemes of ground water resources development such as artificial recharging and in selecting an appropriate one out of many proposed schemes for its sustainable development. This paper presents an analytical solution of groundwater flow equation for unconfined, anisotropic, 2-D rectangular aquifer under the Boussinesq approximation to predict water table fluctuations in the aquifer in response to general time-varying intermittent recharge from multiple rectangular infiltration basins of different spatial dimensions. The horizontal anisotropy incorporated in the model is such that the principal axes of the hydraulic conductivity tensor are oriented parallel to the rectangular sides of the aquifer. The time-varying recharge rate is approximated by a series of line elements of different lengths and slopes depending on the nature of variation of recharge rate. The solution is obtained by using extended finite Fourier sine transform. Application of the solution is demonstrated with the help of synthetic examples. Numerical results of the analytical solutions are verified by comparison with the results obtained from MODFLOW. Numerical results indicate significant effect of anisotropy in hydraulic conductivity on the nature of water table variation. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013