Abstract

Groundwater is a major source for drinking and domestic purposes. Nowadays, extensive pumping has become a major issue of concern since pumping has led to rapid decline in the groundwater table, thus imposing landward gradient, leading to saline water intrusion especially in coastal areas. Groundwater pumping has seen its utmost effect on coastal aquifer systems, where the sea- ward gradient gets disturbed due to anthropogenic influences. Hence, a groundwater contaminant transport modelling of an aquifer system is essential for understanding the various hydro- geologic conditions, which can be used to study the responses of the aquifer system with regard to various pumping and recharge scenarios. Besides, a model helps to predict the water levels for the future period with respect to changing environment. In this study, a finite element groundwater contaminant transport model of a coastal aquifer system at Aakulam, Trivandrum district is developed, calibrated simulated and predicted using the software Finite Element subsurface Flow system (FEFLOW 6.2).

Keywords: Contaminant-transport modelling; Finite element model FEFLOW; TDS