Page 9 - 2020 GGE Newsletter

Page 9

A NOTE FROM THE INTEGRATED GROUNDWATER MODELING
CENTER (IGWMC)

REED MAXWELL , DIRECTOR

WRITTEN BY LISA GALLAGHER,
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, EDUCATION AND OUTREACH SPECIALIST

The Integrated GroundWater Modeling Center (IGWMC) is an internationally oriented research, education, and information
center for integrated groundwater modeling. Our efforts focus on conducting research in practical, applied areas of ground-
water hydrology and modeling, as well as engaging with our community through education and outreach initiatives. The IG-
WMC also organizes and supports short courses, workshops, and conferences to advance the appropriate use of quality-
assured models in groundwater resources protection and management. As for many, 2020 has been a year like none other.
Here at the IGWMC, we have been continuing our work, supporting each other and our colleagues, and trying to do some of
the “normal” things we would do each year.

Early in 2020 IGWMC Director Reed Maxwell and Education and Outreach Coordinator Lisa Gallagher collaborated with
partners at the University of Arizona and Kitware to develop a virtual physical aquifer model, called the ParFlow Sand Tank
Model (PFST). The timing of this educational tool proved to be pivotal when academia had to quickly transition to online
learning. The PFST has a web browser interface, builds upon open-source software components developed by Kitware, exe-
cutes the integrated hydrology model ParFlow, and uses a framework built upon Python scripting language. Our user inter-
face allows participants to dive into the world of hydrology, making decisions about inputs to groundwater aquifer systems
such as pumping rates and conductivity, visualizing outputs such as stream flow and saturation, and explore various factors
that impact real environmental systems. This tool has already been used in a variety of educational settings and we feel this
emerging educational technology can be used broadly in educational and research-based arenas and can be scaled-up to pro-
vide greater accessibility for students and educators, especially in the current academic environment. Dr. Gallagher has pre-
sented this tool (virtually) at the European Geophysical Union and the American Geophysical Union annual conferences.

Dr. Lisa Gallagher
presenting the Par-
Flow Sand Tank Mod-

This year also brought a new researcher to our center, with Dr. Chen Yang joining the group in late 2019. Her role is to devel-
op the EcoSLIM program (Maxwell et al., 2019, Ecohydrology) by adding new features and accelerating it to applications of
large-scale and long-term simulations. EcoSLIM is a Fortran program based on the Lagrangian particle tracking approach. It
was developed to be seamlessly paired with the integrated ParFlow-CLM model for calculations of transient residence time
distributions and source water mixing. In terms of new features, Chen’s work focuses on adding the random-walk dispersion
and the transfer of particles across the interface between subsurface- and overland-domain. In terms of acceleration, she
focuses on the parallelism of EcoSLIM with heterogeneous parallel architectures (e.g., the multi-GPU with OpenMP/MPI)
and its applications in the North China Plain. The code is currently available on GitHub as a multi-GPU branch (https://
github.com/reedmaxwell/EcoSLIM).