Advances in Aquifer Systems Analysis: Flows, Interactions, Quality Status, and Remediation

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydrogeology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 January 2024) | Viewed by 7373

Special Issue Editors

Department of Engineering and Architecture University of Parma, Parma, Italy
Interests: groundwater; parameter identification; groundwater hydrology; contaminant transport; inverse problems; contaminated sites; flow and transport modelling; climate change
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Chemistry, Life Sciences and Environmental Sustainability, University of Parma, 43124 Parma, Italy
Interests: hydrogeology; contaminant hydrogeology; remediation techniques; emerging contaminants; bioremediation; vermiremediation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The impact of human activities and climate change on groundwater systems is becoming severe. For this reason, the study of aquifer systems is essential for many applications, such as groundwater management, groundwater remediation and geothermal applications. In recent decades, both experimental and numerical techniques have been developed to estimate hydrogeological parameters and to understand groundwater flow and transport processes.

This Special Issue focuses on recent advances and future developments in aquifer system analysis. This involves new advances in the knowledge surrounding the topic of interest. In particular, multidisciplinary approaches are welcome, including chemical isotope and microbiology analyses, numerical modelling, pumping and field test, etc. This includes but is not limited to saturated/unsaturated flow, seawater intrusion, and porous and karst aquifers.

Our aim is for this Special Issue of Water is to provide the readers with multidisciplinary tools that allow for knowledge on aquifer systems to improve.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Zanini
Prof. Dr. Fulvio Celico
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • groundwater
  • numerical modelling
  • contaminant transport
  • groundwater remediation
  • multidisciplinary approach
  • water resources
  • climate change
  • aquifer recharge

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 3297 KiB  
Article
Groundwater Vulnerability to Nitrate Contamination from Fertilizers Using Modified DRASTIC Frameworks
by Maryam Torkashvand, Aminreza Neshat, Saman Javadi, Hossein Yousefi and Ronny Berndtsson
Water 2023, 15(17), 3134; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15173134 - 31 Aug 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1165
Abstract
Vulnerability maps of groundwater provide an efficient means of identifying environmental trends and prioritizing regions for prevention plans. The GIS-based DRASTIC method, however, does not consider the impact of contamination, so there is a need to modify it according to the specifics of [...] Read more.
Vulnerability maps of groundwater provide an efficient means of identifying environmental trends and prioritizing regions for prevention plans. The GIS-based DRASTIC method, however, does not consider the impact of contamination, so there is a need to modify it according to the specifics of the region and its contamination load. The aim of this study is to investigate a suitable DRASTIC modification for vulnerability assessment by changes in its rating and weighting systems. The goal is to explore and compare the impact of both objective and subjective weighting methods in the vulnerability assessment of a smaller aquifer situated beneath agricultural land. The frequency ratio (FR) method is used to adjust the DRASTIC index rates based on nitrate contamination as the main contamination from fertilizers extensively used in the study area. The DRASTIC parameters’ weights are determined using two objective and subjective methods, including Shannon entropy and single-parameter sensitivity analysis (SPSA), respectively. In total, five frameworks, including FR-DRASTIC, DRASTIC-Entropy, DRASTIC-SPSA, FR-SPSA, and FR-Entropy are developed and evaluated. We validate these proposed vulnerability indices based on the nitrate concentrations in 14 samples. The results show that the vulnerability map obtained from the FR-Entropy framework is superior, showing a 0.85 correlation with nitrate concentrations. Notably, Shannon entropy as an objective weighting method outperformed the subjective SPSA approach. Full article
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14 pages, 3311 KiB  
Article
Modeling of Distributed Control System for Network of Mineral Water Wells
by Ivan M. Pershin, Elena G. Papush, Tatyana V. Kukharova and Vladimir A. Utkin
Water 2023, 15(12), 2289; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15122289 - 19 Jun 2023
Cited by 27 | Viewed by 1521
Abstract
The article is devoted to solving the problem of designing a distributed control system for a network of production wells on the example of mineral water deposits in the Caucasus Mineral Waters region, Russia. The purpose was to determine the set of parameters [...] Read more.
The article is devoted to solving the problem of designing a distributed control system for a network of production wells on the example of mineral water deposits in the Caucasus Mineral Waters region, Russia. The purpose was to determine the set of parameters of the control system to ensure technologically effective and safe operating modes of mineral water deposits. A mathematical model of the deposit was developed taking into account the given configuration and production rate of the network of the wells. The detailed algorithm is presented for designing the control system under consideration based on the frequency concept of analysis and synthesis for distributed control systems. The experimental tests and model validation were performed at the production wells facility of “Narzan”, Kislovodsk, Russia. The results of modeling and field experiments confirmed the adequacy of the mathematical model and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The authors came to the conclusion that the adapted mathematical model can be used to create a regional automated field cluster management system for monitoring, operational management and forecasting the nature of real hydrogeological processes and ensuring their stability. Full article
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34 pages, 17958 KiB  
Article
How to Minimize the Environmental Contamination Caused by Hydrocarbon Releases by Onshore Pipelines: The Key Role of a Three-Dimensional Three-Phase Fluid Flow Numerical Model
by Alessandra Feo, Riccardo Pinardi, Emanuele Scanferla and Fulvio Celico
Water 2023, 15(10), 1900; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15101900 - 17 May 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1005
Abstract
The contamination impact and the migration of the contaminant into the surrounding environment due to the presence of a spilled oil pipeline will cause significant damage to the natural ecosystem. For this reason, developing a rapid response strategy that might include accurate predictions [...] Read more.
The contamination impact and the migration of the contaminant into the surrounding environment due to the presence of a spilled oil pipeline will cause significant damage to the natural ecosystem. For this reason, developing a rapid response strategy that might include accurate predictions of oil migration trajectories from numerical simulation modeling is decisive. This paper uses a three-dimensional model based on a high-resolution shock-capturing conservative method to resolve the nonlinear governing partial differential equations of the migration of a spilled light nonaqueous liquid oil contaminant in a variably saturated zone employed to investigate the migration of the oil pipeline leakage with great accuracy. The effects of the oil type density, gasoline, and diesel oil, the unsaturated zone depth, its saturation, the hydraulic gradient, and the pressure oil pipeline are investigated through the temporal evolution of the contaminant migration following the saturation profiles of the three-phase fluid flow in the variably saturated zone. The calculation results indicate that the leaking oil’s pressure is the parameter that significantly affects the contaminants’ arrival time at the groundwater table. Additionally, the water saturation of the unsaturated zone influences the arrival time, as the water saturation increases at a fixed depth. The unsaturated zone depth significantly influences the contaminant migration in the unsaturated zone. At the same time, the oil density and the hydraulic gradient have limited effects on the contaminant migration in the variably saturated zone. Full article
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13 pages, 5737 KiB  
Article
Migration of DNAPL in Saturated Porous Media: Validation of High-Resolution Shock-Capturing Numerical Simulations through a Sandbox Experiment
by Alessandra Feo, Fulvio Celico and Andrea Zanini
Water 2023, 15(8), 1471; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15081471 - 10 Apr 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1450
Abstract
This paper shows a comparison between experiments carried out in a laboratory-scale sandbox where the migration of a dense nonaqueous phase liquid (DNAPL), hydrofluoroether (HFE-7100), in a saturated porous medium was investigated, and validation was performed using high-resolution shock-capturing numerical simulations to resolve [...] Read more.
This paper shows a comparison between experiments carried out in a laboratory-scale sandbox where the migration of a dense nonaqueous phase liquid (DNAPL), hydrofluoroether (HFE-7100), in a saturated porous medium was investigated, and validation was performed using high-resolution shock-capturing numerical simulations to resolve the nonlinear governing coupled partial differential equations of a three-phase immiscible fluid flow. The contaminant was released using a colored fluid as a tracer for a fixed time and pressures different from the atmospheric one into the saturated zone, first by using a column laboratory experiment, and then a sandbox-scale example with a hydraulic gradient. A digital image analysis procedure was used to determine the saturation distribution of the contaminant during its migration. These results are compared with the values determined for a DNAPL migration in a similar porous media through a numerical simulation. They show good agreement with the experimental results and also show that CactusHydro can follow the migration of a plume evolution very precisely and can also be used to evaluate the effects and environmental impacts deriving from leaks of DNAPL in saturated zones. Full article
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16 pages, 4111 KiB  
Article
Development of a Distributed Control System for the Hydrodynamic Processes of Aquifers, Taking into Account Stochastic Disturbing Factors
by Yury Valeryevich Ilyushin and Mir-Amal Mirrashidovich Asadulagi
Water 2023, 15(4), 770; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15040770 - 15 Feb 2023
Cited by 20 | Viewed by 1683
Abstract
Uncontrolled, intensive extraction of water from mineral water deposits can lead to negative consequences, the penetration of sewage beyond the water-resistant layers, the destruction of the structure of aquifers and the further loss of the mineral water source. This paper deals with the [...] Read more.
Uncontrolled, intensive extraction of water from mineral water deposits can lead to negative consequences, the penetration of sewage beyond the water-resistant layers, the destruction of the structure of aquifers and the further loss of the mineral water source. This paper deals with the issues of control of hydrodynamic processes under random impacts in the aquifers of mineral water deposits using mathematical models. The analysis of the technological process of mineral water extraction and statistical analysis of retrospective monitoring data of the deposit were carried out in order to confirm the hypothesis of the stationarity of the processes under consideration. A mathematical model of hydrogeological processes occurring under random disturbances has been constructed. The influence of such disturbances is expressed in deviations of the head in the aquifer from the desired value. Controlling consists of maintaining the head of aquifers at a given level in order to preserve the hydro-mineral base of the region. Lumped and distributed controllers are proposed as corrective blocks, the parameters of which are calculated by frequency methods of controller synthesis. The use of a closed loop control system minimizes the influence of random effects. Full article
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