GroMoPo Metadata for Heihe River Basin MODFLOW model

The Heihe River Basin (HRB) is an inland watershed in northwest China with a total area of approximately 130,000 km(2), stretching from the Qilian Mountains in the south to the oases and agricultural fields in the middle and further to the Gobi desert in the north bordering Mongolia. As part of a major ecohydrological research initiative to provide a stronger scientific underpinning for sustainable water management in arid ecosystems, a regional-scale integrated ecological and hydrological model is being developed, incorporating the knowledge based on the results of environmental isotope tracer analysis and the multiscale observation datasets. The first step in the model development effort is to construct and calibrate a groundwater flow model for the middle and lower HRB where the oases and vegetation along the Heihe river corridor are highly dependent on groundwater. In this study, the software tool Arc Hydro Groundwater' is used to build and visualize a hydrogeological data model for the HRB that links all relevant spatiotemporal hydrogeological data in a unified geodatabase within the ArcGIS environment. From the conceptual model, a regional-scale groundwater flow model has been developed using MODFLOW-2005. Critical considerations in developing the flow model include the representation of mountainous terrains and fluvial valleys by individual model layers, treatment of aquifer heterogeneities across multiple scales and selection of proper observation data and boundary conditions for model calibration. This paper discusses these issues in the context of the Heihe River Basin, but the results and insights from this study will have important implications for other large, regional groundwater modelling studies, especially in arid and semiarid inland river basins. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

黑河流域（Heihe River Basin, HRB）是中国西北内陆流域，总面积约13万平方千米，南起祁连山，向北依次延伸至中游的绿洲与农田，最终抵达北部与蒙古国接壤的戈壁荒漠。作为旨在为干旱生态系统可持续水资源管理提供坚实科学支撑的重大生态水文学研究计划的组成部分，研究团队正在开发一套区域尺度的综合生态水文模型，该模型整合了基于环境同位素示踪分析成果及多尺度观测数据集的相关科学认知。模型开发的首要步骤是针对黑河流域中下游构建并校准地下水流模型——该区域内黑河廊道沿线的绿洲与植被高度依赖地下水。本研究采用Arc Hydro Groundwater软件工具，在ArcGIS环境下搭建并可视化黑河流域水文地质数据模型，将所有相关时空水文地质数据整合至统一的地理数据库中。基于该概念模型，研究团队利用MODFLOW-2005开发了区域尺度地下水流模型。构建该水流模型的关键考量包括：以独立模型图层表征山地地形与河谷、处理多尺度含水层非均质性，以及为模型校准选取合适的观测数据与边界条件。本文围绕黑河流域探讨了上述问题，但本研究的成果与认识对其他大型区域地下水流模拟研究，尤其是干旱半干旱内陆流域的相关研究，具有重要借鉴意义。版权所有©2014约翰威立父子有限公司（John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.）