Design of groundwater level monitoring network with ordinary kriging

Abstract

The primary network of groundwater level observation wells aims at realizing a regional groundwater management policy. It may give a regional picture of groundwater level with emphasis on the natural situation. Observation data from the primary network can be used to estimate the actual state of groundwater system. Since the cost of the installation and maintenance of a groundwater monitoring network is extremely high, the assessment of effectiveness of the network becomes very necessary. Groundwater level monitoring networks are the examples of discontinuous sampling on variables presenting spatial continuity and highly skewed frequency distributions. Anywhere in the aquifer, ordinary kriging provides estimates of the variable sampled and a standard error of the estimate. In this article, the average Kriging standard deviation was used as a criterion for the determination of network density, and the GIS-based approach was analysized. A case study of groundwater level network simulation in the Chaiwopu Basin, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China, was presented. In the case study, the initial phreatic water observation wells were 18, a comparison of the three variogram parameters of the three defferent variogram models shows that the Gaussian model is the best. Finally, a network with 55 wells was constructed.