Model development and calibration of a saltwater intrusion model in Southern California
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-1-2007
Abstract
A nine-layered confined-unconfined flow and transport model is developed for the Alamitos saltwater intrusion barrier in Southern California. The conceptual model is based on the geological structure of the coastal aquifer system. The key parameters in the flow and transport models are calibrated using a two-phase procedure which matches the types of data available for calibration. Because of the abundance of point measurements of hydraulic conductivity, the heterogeneous and random hydraulic conductivity field for each of the five aquifers is estimated by the geostatiscal method of natural-neighbor-kriging in Phase 1. In Phase 2, the longitudinal and transverse dispersivities in the transport model are estimated by a traditional inverse procedure that minimizes the least-squares error for concentration (LSE-CON). The minimum LSE-CON is achieved near 15.2 and 1.52 m for the longitudinal and transverse dispersivities, respectively. Additional simulations with increasing transport parameter complexity did not yield significant improvements in LSE-CON. Also, tracking least-squares error for head while parametrically varying the transport parameters revealed there is a negligible interaction between predicted head and transport parameters. © 2007 American Water Resources Association.
Publication Source (Journal or Book title)
Journal of the American Water Resources Association
First Page
1329
Last Page
1343
Recommended Citation
Bray, B., Tsai, F., Sim, Y., & Yeh, W. (2007). Model development and calibration of a saltwater intrusion model in Southern California. Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 43 (5), 1329-1343. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-1688.2007.00098.x