Hydrogeology

The Hydrogeology Group has extensive experience in the characterization of aquifer systems with applications in the fields of civil engineering, mining and the environment. The team has obtained important research and technological results in hydrogeology, conjunctive use of surface and groundwater, modeling and management of groundwater, and geostatistics applied to groundwater and subsurface flow and mass transport.

The activity of this team focuses the design and use of mathematical models of groundwater flow and mass transport in porous means in order to solve problems relating to the characterization of aquifers, groundwater management, conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water, groundwater contamination, aquifer recovery and cleaning, storage of toxic and hazardous waste, final disposal of radioactive waste and soil contamination and the unsaturated zone. The emphasis of these lines are on the stochastic analysis of flow and transport using geostatistical tools, which allows to perform a study of uncertainty of the output variables of the different models implemented, as well as systematically combining different types of information, like the one derived from geophysics.

The team has been involved in projects funded by the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ramón Areces Foundation, the European Community, ENRESA, CEDEX and the Joint Hispanic-North American Scientific and Technological Research Committee. Numerical modeling of both the quantity and quality of surface and underground water resources and their possible interrelationship, together with the characterization of the spatial variability of the parameters that define the characteristics of aquifers, are the themes in which these projects and contracts revolve. The mathematical methods and models that have been developed from these projects have had immediate practical application and have been recognized, in comparison exercises, as world class leaders.

As an example, the self-calibrating method was initially developed within the research contract “INTRAVAL – validation of codes in the geosphere” for ENRESA and has been evaluated by the team of experts in Geostatistics from the SANDIA National Laboratories, USA; whom are the best in its class (see the article by Zimmerman et al., 1998).

Research lines of Hydrogeology