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Abstract:
There is a strong need for better scientific knowledge of groundwater behavior in Floridan-type karstic aquifers and for better mechanisms to transfer such knowledge into practiceTo facilitate this transfer, a new scientific organization called the Hydrogeology Consortium has recently been establishedThe Consortium is described in detail elsewhere in this volumeIts mission is to cooperatively provide scientific knowledge applicable to groundwater resource management and protectionA necessary adjunct to the mission of the Consortium is the development of better models of transport and dispersion in karstic aquifersA first step in this development is elucidation of the shortcomings of the standard model of dispersionIn this model, dispersion is represented by an effective diffusivity, called the dispersion coefficient, which is the product of the mean flow speed and the decorrelation distanceIt is shown that this model does not correctly describe dispersion in an aquifer having porosity that is weakly correlated on a large scaleThat is, the concept of a decorrelation distance is not viable for a non-homogeneous aquiferOne approach toward the quantification of transport and dispersion in karstic aquifers to model the aquifer as a classic Darcian porous medium riddled by a distribution of macroscopic conduitsThe flow properties of this model are compatible with the standard Darcian model, but its transport equation is non-autonomous; it has coefficients that depend on the elapsed time