Simulation of a groundwater fall caused by geological discontinuities

In some areas close to a reverse fault with significant vertical displacement, or the boundary of a mining area in multi-layer rock and the boundary of perched water, the phreatic water-level changes abruptly from one side of the fault or boundary to the other. There is no direct hydraulic connection between the two sides and a groundwater fall occurs across the fault or boundary. This groundwater fall cannot be easily handled by the modules available in MODFLOW. Semi-analytical solutions were derived for water discharge from the upstream to the downstream side of the fault or boundary, and verified by air-water two-phase numerical simulation. The numerical results show that the derived semi-analytical solutions can be used to accurately estimate the groundwater flux at the fault even though the unsaturated zone is not considered. A module package, GWF, was developed to simulate the groundwater fall, which can be embedded directly into MODFLOW. A theoretical example is presented to show how the package GWF is used to simulate perched water. This package was also applied successfully to build a regional groundwater model of the Urumqi River Basin, Xinjiang, China, and the simulation results showed good agreement with the local hydrogeologic conditions.