In many parts of the world, groundwater resources are under increasing threat from growing demands, wasteful use, and contamination. To face the challenge, good planning and management practices are needed. A key to the management of groundwater is the ability to model the movement of fluids and contaminants in the subsurface. The purpose of this book is to construct conceptual and mathematical models that can provide the information required for making decisions associated with the management of groundwater resources, and the remediation of contaminated aquifers. The basic approach of this book is to accurately describe the underlying physics of groundwater flow and solute transport in heterogeneous porous media, starting at the microscopic level, and to rigorously derive their mathematical representation at the macroscopic levels. The well-posed, macroscopic mathematical models are formulated for saturated, single phase flow, as well as for unsaturated and multiphase flow, and for the transport of single and multiple chemical species. Numerical models are presented and computer codes are reviewed, as tools for solving the models. The problem of seawater intrusion into coastal aquifers is examined and modeled. The issues of uncertainty in model input data and output are addressed. The book concludes with a chapter on the management of groundwater resources. Although one of the main objectives of this book is to construct mathematical models, the amount of mathematics required is kept minimal.

Impacts of developed tools of heterogenous characterization on the hydrodynamics of flow and the transport mechanisms are illustrated in this text through a series of extensive numerical simulations consisting of single and multiple-realizations (Monte Carlo method).

This book presents and discusses the construction of mathematical models that describe phenomena of flow and transport in porous media as encountered in civil and environmental engineering, petroleum and agricultural engineering, as well as chemical and geothermal engineering. The phenomena of transport of extensive quantities, like mass of fluid phases, mass of chemical species dissolved in fluid phases, momentum and energy of the solid matrix and of fluid phases occupying the void space of porous medium domains are encountered in all these disciplines. The book, which can also serve as a text for courses on modeling in these disciplines, starts from first principles and focuses on the construction of well-posed mathematical models that describe all these transport phenomena.

Groundwater is one of the most important resources in the world. In many areas, water supplies for industrial, domestic, and agricultural uses are de pendent on groundwater. As an "open" system, groundwater may exchange mass and energy with its neighboring systems (soil, air, and surface water) through adsorption, ion-exchange, infiltration, evaporation, inflow, outflow, and other exchange forms. Consequently, both the quantity and quality of groundwater may vary with environmental changes and human activities. Due to population growth, and industrial and agricultural development, more and more groundwater is extracted, especially in arid areas. If the groundwater management problem is not seriously considered, over extraction may lead to groundwater mining, salt water intrusion, and land subsidence. In fact, the quality of groundwater is gradually deteriorating throughout the world. The problem of groundwater pollution has appeared, not only in developed countries, but also in developing countries. Ground water pollution is a serious environmental problem that may damage human health, destroy the ecosystem, and cause water shortage.