Sharif Digital Repository

The groundwater system in the Rafsanjan aquifer perpetuated sustainably for decades before 1950s; however, its groundwater resources have been overexploited in the recent decades. In this paper, we aim to investigate the water governance system to understand the reasons behind the ongoing overexploitation. Sustainability processes are considered a policy implementation problematic. As such, we employ the contextual interaction theory as a policy implementation framework to assess the groundwater governance as part of the context for the conservation policy. Data for this qualitative research were gathered from legal texts, articles, technical reports, and multiple interviews with authorities... 

Groundwater vulnerability assessment of urban areas is a challenging task in the fast trend of urbanization around the globe. This study introduces a new approach for modifying well-known parameters of common vulnerability indexes to adjust them for urban areas. The approach is independent of a specific weighting system. The aquifer of Mashhad city, contaminated by domestic wastewater, is selected as a case in this study. In order to evaluate the aquifer vulnerability due to anthropogenic activities, at first, parameters of depth to groundwater, recharge, land use, and soil are modified based on their basic concepts and their influences on contamination attenuation. Then, the modified... 

In Iran, due to arid and semi-arid climate, groundwater resources play an essential role in food production, as well as domestic and industrial water supply. In recent years, increasing population, scarcity of surface water resources, and effects of worldwide and regional climate change have resulted in over-exploitation and unsustainability of these resources in the country. The present study aims to estimate groundwater sustainable yield, examine effects of spatial and temporal scale, and propose a plan for groundwater sustainable use in Nishapur Plain, in the north-east of Iran. In investigating the effects of spatial scale, the area of the plain is divided into several zones, with... 

Elevated levels of nitrate (NO3) in groundwater systems pose a serious risk to human populations and natural ecosystems. As part of an effort to remediate NO3 contamination in irrigated stream-aquifer systems, this study elucidates agricultural and environmental parameters and processes that govern NO3 fate and transport at the regional (500 km2), local (50 km2), and field scales (<1 km2). Specifically, the revised Morris sensitivity analysis method was applied to a finite-difference nitrogen cycling and reactive transport model of a regional-scale study site in the lower Arkansas River valley in southeastern Colorado. The method was used to rank the influence of anthropogenic activities and... 

Bayesian inference has traditionally been conceived as the proper framework for the formal incorporation of expert knowledge in parameter estimation of groundwater models. However, conventional Bayesian inference is incapable of taking into account the imprecision essentially embedded in expert provided information. In order to solve this problem, a number of extensions to conventional Bayesian inference have been introduced in recent years. One of these extensions is 'fuzzy Bayesian inference' which is the result of integrating fuzzy techniques into Bayesian statistics. Fuzzy Bayesian inference has a number of desirable features which makes it an attractive approach for incorporating expert... 

Over past decades, extensive research has been performed on the measurement of land subsidence as a result of compaction of aquifer. This paper describes results from a new field-monitoring system to evaluate changes in matric suction and temperature profiles in soil layers over an extended time period. The monitoring system used in this study consists of inserting dielectric sensors into a 105 m borehole, drilled in a site in Ardabil Plain, The monitoring results from the site were used to calibrate predictions from HYDRUS-1D. The physical and hydraulic properties of the soil materials in different layers were obtained through performing some soil characteristics and filter paper tests... 

Assessing environmentally sustainable GW management (ESGM) needs a deep knowledge of the present and the projected status of GW (GW) quantity and quality. Translations of these data into policy relevant information are usually done through quantitative indices. Despite the availability of a dozen GW sustainability indicators, defining an integrated index based on internationally accepted scientific standards indicators is required. To fill this gap, an in-depth review on the developed indicators/index for evaluation of GW sustainable management (GWSM) from an environmental viewpoint at aquifer scales is provided in this study. Thirteen environmentally related quantitative indicators are... 

The fresh groundwater lenses (FGLs) of small islands can be highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, including sea-level rise (SLR). Many real cases of atoll or sandy islands involve two-layer hydrogeological conceptualizations. In this paper, the influential factors that affect FGLs in two-layer small islands subject to SLR are investigated. An analytical solution describing FGLs in circular islands, composed of two geological layers, is developed for the simplified case of steady-state and sharp-interface conditions. An application of the developed model is demonstrated to estimate the FGL thickness of some real-world islands by comparison with existing FGL thickness data. Furthermore,... 

This paper surveys the literature associated with the application of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) in coastal groundwater management problems (CGMPs). This review demonstrates that previous studies were mostly relied on the application of limited and particular EAs, mainly genetic algorithm (GA) and its variants, to a number of specific problems. The exclusive investigation of these problems is often not the representation of the variety of feasible processes may be occurred in coastal aquifers. In this study, eight EAs are evaluated for CGMPs. The considered EAs are: GA, continuous ant colony optimization (CACO), particle swarm optimization (PSO), differential evolution (DE), artificial bee... 

An accurate estimation of aquifer hydraulic parameters is required for groundwater modeling and proper management of vital groundwater resources. In situ measurements of aquifer hydraulic parameters are expensive and difficult. Traditionally, these parameters have been estimated by graphical methods that are approximate and time-consuming. As a result, nonlinear programming (NLP) techniques have been used extensively to estimate them. Despite the outperformance of NLP approaches over graphical methods, they tend to converge to local minima and typically suffer from a convergence problem. In this study, Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) methods are used to identify... 

Real world models of seawater intrusion (SWI) require high computational efforts. This creates computational difficulties for the uncertainty propagation (UP) analysis of these models due the need for repeated numerical simulations in order to adequately capture the underlying statistics that describe the uncertainty in model outputs. Moreover, despite the obvious advantages of moment-independent global sensitivity analysis (SA) methods, these methods have rarely been employed for SWI and other complex groundwater models. The reason is that moment-independent global SA methods involve repeated UP analysis which further becomes computationally demanding. This study proposes the use of... 

The aim of this study is to develop a new fuzzy optimization model to find the optimal factor weights of modified DRASTIC index for groundwater vulnerability mapping an urban aquifer to nitrate contamination. Eight factors including water table depth, recharge, aquifer media, soil media, topography, impact of vadose zone, hydraulic conductivity, and land use are considered and rated. A fuzzy linear regression is formulated between the values of eight factors and corresponding nitrate concentration in groundwater. An optimization model based on real code genetic algorithm with objective of minimizing the sum of the fuzzy spread of the regression coefficients is implemented. Aquifer of Mashhad... 

Existing closed-form solutions of contaminant transport problems are limited by the mathematically convenient assumption of uniform flow. These solutions cannot be used to investigate contaminant transport in coastal aquifers where seawater intrusion induces a variable velocity field. An adaptation of the Fourier-Galerkin method is introduced to obtain semi-analytical solutions for contaminant transport in a confined coastal aquifer in which the saltwater wedge is in equilibrium with a freshwater discharge flow. Two scenarios dealing with contaminant leakage from the aquifer top surface and contaminant migration from a source at the landward boundary are considered. Robust implementation of... 

The Henry problem (HP) continues to play a useful role in theoretical and practical studies related to seawater intrusion (SWI) into coastal aquifers. The popularity of this problem is attributed to its simplicity and precision to the existence of semi-analytical (SA) solutions. The first SA solution has been developed for a high uniform diffusion coefficient. Several further studies have contributed more realistic solutions with lower diffusion coefficients or velocity-dependent dispersion. All the existing SA solutions are limited to homogenous and isotropic domains. This work attempts to improve the realism of the SA solution of the dispersive HP by extending it to heterogeneous and... 

In this study a review of the developed methods to estimate groundwater withdrawal (GWW) from aquifers by pumping wells is provided. Then, a method adopted by Iran's Basic Studies Bureau of Water Resources Management Company for estimation of GWW through 536 aquifers across Iran is presented and modified. This so-called “representative pumping wells network” (RPWN) approach is a combination of statistical and rate-and-time methods which has been implemented for all aquifers in Iran since 2007. The RPWN approach is based on the overlaying of 10 important features in a GIS environment and classified in a number of zones in which their withdrawals are statistically different. The representative... 

Evapotranspiration is one of the main components of water and energy balance. In this study, we compare two ET products, suitable for regional analysis at high spatial resolution: The recent WaPOR product developed by FAO and METRIC algorithm. WaPOR is based on ETLook, which is a two-source model and relies on microwave images. WaPOR is unique as it has no limitation under cloudy days, but METRIC is limited by clouds. METRIC and WaPOR are more sensitive to land surface temperature and soil moisture, respectively. Using two years (2010 and 2014) of data over Lake Urmia basin, we show that in most areas, ET from METRIC is higher than WaPOR and the difference has an ascending trend with the... 

In this study, a review of the overlay/index methods served for delineation of vulnerable zones in coastal aquifers affected by SWI is provided. Then, a more realistic presentation of the vulnerability mapping of coastal aquifers to SWI through modified GALDIT index method by incorporating the influential factors on SWI is established. The modifications on GALDIT method including incorporating the seaward hydraulic gradient (i) instead of the height of groundwater level above sea level (L) (so-called GAiDIT), and considering hydraulic gradient (i) as an additional parameter to the GALDIT (so-called GALDIT-i). Three GALDIT, GAiDIT, and GALDIT-i methods were evaluated with data from three... 

In this research, a confined aquifer with low groundwater flow was considered to meet the cooling and heating requirements of residential complexes. The complexes were located in the cities of Ahvaz, Ardabil, Bandar Abbas, Esfahan, Kerman, Rasht, Tehran, and Zahedan. The complex in Ardabil mostly required heating, the ones in Ahvaz and Bandar Abbas mostly required cooling, and the complexes in other cities required both heating and cooling. Four different alternatives of Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) were analyzed in this study. These alternatives consisted of using ATES: 1) alone for cooling, 2) coupled with a conventional refrigeration system or a chiller for cooling, 3) by... 

In this research, a confined aquifer with low groundwater flow was considered to meet the cooling and heating requirements of residential complexes. The complexes were located in the cities of Ahvaz, Ardabil, Bandar Abbas, Esfahan, Kerman, Rasht, Tehran, and Zahedan. The complex in Ardabil mostly required heating, the ones in Ahvaz and Bandar Abbas mostly required cooling, and the complexes in other cities required both heating and cooling. Four different alternatives of Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) were analyzed in this study. These alternatives consisted of using ATES: 1) alone for cooling, 2) coupled with a conventional refrigeration system or a chiller for cooling, 3) by...