Abstract:
Groundwater is sensitive to the climate change and agricultural activities in arid
and semi-arid areas. Over the past several decades, human activities, such as
groundwater extraction for irrigation, have resulted in aquifer overdraft and
disrupted the natural equilibrium in these areas. This study reports research on the
effect of pumping water from several wells in a given aquifer. We have considered,
for simplicity, an idealized one layer aquifer which has been discretized into 49
identical blocks studied on the middle horizontal row of blocks. We have
developed a numerical simulating model by discretizing the equation of continuity
which we have converted into computer codes. A program has then been written.
This program has successfully generated both hydraulic head and velocity profile
distributions. The results reveal that there are less hydraulic head losses on
pumpage from blocks which are far apart, the velocities being least in blocks which
are far from the pumpage blocks. The results obtained have a high correlation with
those from the well-known Theis equation for drawdown. The results would
greatly help in limiting the usage of a given aquifer with respect to the maximum
number of wells permissible in the aquifer as well as predict the levels of
groundwater in a particular aquifer.
