MODPATH6 models used to evaluate effects of complexity on groundwater age metrics in the Fox-Wolf-Peshtigo watersheds, Wisconsin

Description

This data release contains five groundwater particle-tracking models (MODPATH6) of northeastern Wisconsin, USA, that were developed to work with three MODFLOW models that have differing levels of complexity. The previously developed MODFLOW models (https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20175010 and https://doi.org/10.5066/F73J3B3P) were modified slightly to ensure proper functioning with MODPATH6. Modifications to the original MODFLOW models included: 1. changing IPHDRY in the UPW package so that the dry cell flag value (HDRY) was written to the binary heads (*.hds) file, 2. selecting the compact budget option to ensure proper utilization of IFACE values by MODPATH, and 3. the period length (PERLEN) was increased for one model, although it has no effect on the simulation. The goal of the modeling exercise was to evaluate the effects of the flow-model (MODFLOW) based complexity on estimates of groundwater age metrics. Results of the evaluation illustrate the importance of properly simulating perennial streams, as both hydraulically fully-penetrating streams and hydraulically partially-penetrating streams influence groundwater ages in aquifers by capturing groundwater of differing age that is associated with the aquifer depth from which the groundwater is captured. This work was performed as part of the National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Project's groundwater Mapping and Modeling work plan to evaluate effects of differing levels of model complexity on simulated results. This USGS data release contains all of the input and output files for the simulations described in the associated Groundwater paper (https://doi.org/10.1111/gwat.13088).

Resources

Name Format Description Link
55 Landing page for access to the data https://doi.org/10.5066/P99YKM02
55 The metadata original format https://data.usgs.gov/datacatalog/metadata/USGS.fbf35e7f-ac43-4dac-8087-f1870a663f04.xml

Tags

  • environment
  • groundwater
  • modpath
  • usgs-fbf35e7f-ac43-4dac-8087-f1870a663f04
  • usgsgroundwatermodel
  • geoscientificinformation
  • inlandwaters
  • glacial-aquifer
  • fox-wolf-peshtigo-watersheds
  • groundwater-model
  • modflow-nwt
  • wisconsin

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