Application of a coupled adjoint sensitivity and kriging approach to calibrate a groundwater flow model

Abstract

A new technique is employed to calibrate a regional‐scale groundwater flow model to an extensive data base of undisturbed (i.e., assumed to be steady state) and transient heads. The methodology presented in this study is similar in concept to one presented by de Marsily et al. (1984) in that an adjoint sensitivity technique is coupled with a kriging algorithm to calibrate a flow model. The notable difference of the methodology presented in this paper is that it directly identifies the regions where modification of the model's kriged transmissivity or boundary pressure values will directly improve the overall fit between measured and model‐calculated heads at selected wells. At the locations identified as most sensitive to transmissivity changes, synthetic transmissivity values, referred to as pilot points, are added to the transmissivity data base and used as input for kriging the transmissivity field. An application of the methodology to data originating from approximately 10 years of regional hydrogeologic site characterization efforts that have been conducted in the Culebra dolomite at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southeastern New Mexico is presented.