An Analysis Platform for Multiscale Hydrogeologic Modeling with Emphasis on Hybrid Multiscale Methods

One of the most significant challenges faced by hydrogeologic modelers is the disparity between the spatial and temporal scales at which fundamental flow, transport, and reaction processes can best be understood and quantified (e.g., microscopic to pore scales and seconds to days) and at which practical model predictions are needed (e.g., plume to aquifer scales and years to centuries). While the multiscale nature of hydrogeologic problems is widely recognized, technological limitations in computation and characterization restrict most practical modeling efforts to fairly coarse representations of heterogeneous properties and processes. For some modern problems, the necessary level of simplification is such that model parameters may lose physical meaning and model predictive ability is questionable for any conditions other than those to which the model was calibrated. Recently, there has been broad interest across a wide range of scientific and engineering disciplines in simulation approaches that more rigorously account for the multiscale nature of systems of interest. In this article, we review a number of such approaches and propose a classification scheme for defining different types of multiscale simulation methods and those classes of problems to which they are most applicable. Our classification scheme is presented in terms of a flowchart (Multiscale Analysis Platform), and defines several different motifs of multiscale simulation. Within each motif, the member methods are reviewed and example applications are discussed. We focus attention on hybrid multiscale methods, in which two or more models with different physics described at fundamentally different scales are directly coupled within a single simulation. Very recently these methods have begun to be applied to groundwater flow and transport simulations, and we discuss these applications in the context of our classification scheme. As computational and characterization capabilities continue to improve, we envision that hybrid multiscale modeling will become more common and also a viable alternative to conventional single‐scale models in the near future.     

Geostatistical characterization of soil moisture and chloride distribution in deep vadose profiles of the Badain Jaran Desert,Northwestern China

Geostatistical analysis of soil moisture and ion accumulation can provide a deep understanding of aspects of a region’s hydrology such as recharge rates and flow paths. By combining this approach with detrended canonical correspondence analysis, the present study investigated the vertical and spatial variation of soil moisture and chloride (Cl^?) in vadose profiles of megadunes near lakes in the southeastern Badain Jaran Desert, northwestern China. Soil moisture varied vertically within the dune profiles following exponential, logarithmic, or log-normal distributions at different sites as a result of regulation by different local controls. The main local controls for Cl^? concentration were slope and orientation of the dune. Cl^? was not affected by local controls at depths >5 m. Sills of spatial variation in soil moisture and Cl^? in the variogram analysis were highly sensitive to local controls in the top 4 m of the profiles, and the values were three times those at depths >4 m. The lag for soil moisture was insensitive to local controls, and was 50–60 m in the top 4 m of the profiles and 20 m in deeper layers, whereas the lag for Cl^? was about 20 m at all depths. The results demonstrate that understanding recharge rates using factors such as Cl^? accumulation requires a careful survey to ensure that the local controls that regulate these factors are adequately accounted for.     

Combustion Kinetics of Athabasca Bitumen from 1D Combustion Tube Experiments

There are two basic requirements for heavy-oil recovery processes: first, mobilize the bitumen, and second, have a drive mechanism deliver the mobilized bitumen to a production wellbore. In situ combustion has the potential to be an important heavy-oil recovery method. Before design of in situ combustion recovery processes can start, it is necessary as a first step to understand the kinetics of various complex chemical reactions and determine kinetic constants associated with the reactions. Even with modern reservoir simulation capabilities, this is a significant challenge. In this research, an Athabasca bitumen combustion tube experiment, conducted by the ISC Research Group at the University of Calgary, was history matched by using a reservoir thermal simulator to determine a set of kinetic parameters as well as the transport parameters for the system. The main results of the history match was a match of air injection rate, bitumen and gas production volumes, average product gas compositions, temperature profiles along the tube through time, and pressure. Gridding sensitivities were examined to determine if the derived kinetic and transport parameters were dependent on gridblock size. The results revealed that the grid was refined enough to sufficiently capture thermal, mass transfer, and reaction length scales. After this single match was achieved, the same constants were used to successfully predict several other combustion tube experiments. The results suggest that the fuel (coke) for high-temperature oxidation (HTO) originates mainly from low-temperature oxidation (LTO) and not from thermal cracking. This implies that the major control on HTO is upstream oxygen transfer into the LTO region. If LTO does not occur, then a relatively small amount of coke is deposited in the matrix due to thermal cracking and this may be insufficient to start or sustain HTO.     

Wheat as food, wheat as industrial substance; comparative geographies of transformation and mobility

Wheat is the world’s second largest crop, supplies 19% of human calories, and is the largest volume crop traded internationally. Its uniquely malleable physical properties make it a valued industrial substance, albeit often an invisible one, as well as a food. This combination of transformation, invisibility and mobility demands new ways of thinking about wheat geographies. In this paper we document and analyse several ‘moments’ in the life of Australian wheat; at the supermarket, in the lives of coeliac sufferers, in laboratories, industrial factories and on the farm. We illustrate diverse patterns of interaction with wheat. The major plane of differentiation is between wheat as food and wheat as industrial substance. The explicit connection of food to the human body tends to fix the identity of wheat, whether as healthy staple of the nation, or harmful poison to coeliacs who must negotiate its presence using the regulatory regime of food labelling. This is no small task given the ubiquity of wheat; our survey of 10,235 supermarket items found it in 29.5% of labelled food items. In contrast, when wheat is physically and chemically disassembled to become an industrial substance, its presence and identity become mutable, hidden and often invisible.     

On the reynolds stress and lateral eddy viscosity due to transient oceanic Rossby waves

Summary From numerical solutions of a wind-driven homogeneous ocean model, anegative lateral eddy viscosity of the order 10⁴ cm² sec^–1 is inferred from the large-scale time-dependent currents in the interior of an enclosed shallow basin. The transient Rossby waves in this region produce a systematic convergence of eddy momentum at the latitude of the maximum average eastward current, and thus effect a transfer of zonal momentum from the large-scale eddies to the mean flow. In this sense they are analogous to the Rossby waves in the atmospheric general circulation, and it is speculated that such waves may help to maintain the mean zonal ocean currents. Although this negative viscosity induced by the large-scale transients is relatively small compared with the prescribed lateral viscosity of 10⁸ cm² sec^–1 and should be given a quite different physical interpretation, it is evidently an important viscous effect for the mean flow in the interior of the basin. The prescribed viscosity, on the other hand, is effective in controlling the model's simulated sub-grid scale dissipation, which occurs almost entirely in the nearby steady boundary currents.     

Exhumed Himalayan-type syntaxis in the Grenville orogen, northeastern Laurentia

A deep-seated analog of the syntaxis developed in the Tibetan Plateau occurs in the Grenville Orogen of eastern Laurentia. During the final assembly of Rodinia, Amazonia collided with Laurentia and produced a series of large, conjugate, transcurrent, shear systems and pervasive strike-slip deformation that overprinted compressional structures related to the Ottawan Orogeny (the last orogenic phase of what is considered Grenvillian). A northeast-striking dextral system at least 35-km wide developed in the Reading Prong of New York (locally known as the Hudson Highlands), New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. U-Pb SHRIMP zircon geochronology and Ar/Ar thermochronology on the lowest grade cataclasites constrain the age of movement between 1008 and 876 Ma. A 60-km-wide, east-west striking, sinistral shear system developed across the central Adirondack Highlands. This system overprints rocks with granulite-facies metamorphic assemblages containing ca. 1050 Ma metamorphic zircons and is cut by a swarm of 950 Ma leucogranites. The timing, geometric relationships, and shear sense of the Adirondacks and Reading Prong shear systems suggest a conjugate system within a syntaxis with bulk compression directed ENE–WSW. This tectonic scenario invokes a component of strike-parallel deformation during the Ottawan Orogeny and provides a kinematic mechanism for an otherwise enigmatic, synchronous, late (ca. 930 Ma) extensional event including the Carthage–Colton mylonite zone in the northwest Adirondacks and Canada.     

Pt-Os and Re-Os systematics of the Sudbury Igneous Complex, Ontario

We measured by negative thermal ionization mass spectrometry (NTIMS) Re, Os and ¹⁸⁶Os/¹⁸⁸Os and ¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os in 26 samples of 18 Ni-Cu sulfide ores from the Falconbridge, McCreedy West, and Strathcona mines at Sudbury, Ontario. At McCreedy West and Falconbridge, the isochron Re-Os ages are 1835 ± 70 Ma and 1827 ± 340 Ma, and the initial ¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os ratios 0.514 ± 0.019 and 0.550 ± 0.024, respectively. The ages agree with the canonical value of 1850 ± 1 Ma for the Sudbury Igneous Complex (SIC). For Hangingwall and Deep Zone ores at Strathcona, the age of 1780 ± 7 Ma may reflect resetting by dyke activity. The high initial ¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os of 0.934 ± 0.005 in these ores is distinct from those at McCreedy West and Falconbridge. Strathcona Deep Copper Zone ores have highly radiogenic Os giving a mean model age of 1883 ± 54 Ma that is similar to ages at McCreedy West and Falconbridge, but distinct from other Strathcona sulfides. Initial ¹⁸⁶Os/¹⁸⁸Os in two Strathcona ores with low ¹⁹⁰Pt/¹⁸⁸Os average 0.119 826 ± 0.000 009 (n = 3) and 0.119 827 ± 0.000 004 (n = 3), respectively, with a grand mean of 0.119 827 ± 0.000 003. This ratio may be slightly lower than the chondritic value at that time. Similar ores at Falconbridge and McCreedy West show more scatter, averaging 0.119 855 ± 0.000 008 (n = 6) and 0.119 867 ± 0.000 020 (n = 3), respectively. These values are substantially suprachondritic. The Re-Os isotope systematics of Sudbury ores are clearly of crustal origin and may be derived from a binary mixture of Superior Province and Huronian metasedimentary rocks, with Strathcona, Falconbridge, and McCreedy West ores containing, respectively, 55%, 16%, and 12% of Os from Superior sediments. The suprachondritic ¹⁸⁶Os/¹⁸⁸Os at McCreedy West and Falconbridge may be due to admixture of Archean or Paleozoic mafic rocks with ¹⁹⁰Pt/¹⁸⁸Os ≈ 0.1. No trace of the asteroid that produced the Sudbury Structure has been reported. At the Whistle mine S-poor olivine melanorite inclusions with high Ni and Os and low ¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os may contain the signature of a magmatically fractionated asteroidal core contributing 1 to 2.5 % metal. The S-poor melanorite Ni and Os data are equally well explained by admixture of ≈40% mantle peridotite, however.