Join Us at the Western Groundwater Forum!

We’re excited to share that Aquanty will be taking part in the 2026 Western Groundwater Forum — an event dedicated to bringing the groundwater community together to share knowledge, strengthen collaboration, and advance groundwater science and management. At this year’s forum, Mike Callaghan, Senior Applications Engineer at Aquanty, will present: Flee From Parsimony: Escaping the Boundary Condition Paradox in Groundwater Modelling.

DATE: May 28, 2026
LOCATION: Calgary, Alberta. Grey Eagle Resort.

Visit the conference website by clicking the links below, and discover the full speaker list, and registration details.

ABSTRACT:

Flee From Parsimony: Escaping the Boundary Condition Paradox in Groundwater Modelling

Questions being posed of hydrologic models by clients, governments and regulators are becoming broader ranging and more complex, for example, how will the model results be affected by climate change; what are the cumulative regional effects on groundwater resources; how will water quality be affected; and, what are the effects on surface water-groundwater (SW-GW) interaction?

Groundwater models typically have recharge zones prescribed by the modeller, with surface water features delineated with specified boundary conditions. The location and timing of recharge is highly variable, and specifying the location and magnitude of recharge is to some degree assuming a model input that should be a model output, and that is the boundary condition paradox. In a climate change assessment, if recharge is prescribed, how do you propagate changing precipitation patterns, shifting evapotranspiration, and altered snowmelt timing through the model? Cumulative regional effects require spatial scales and process interactions that simple recharge zones sub-divide somewhat arbitrarily. Contaminant transport is sensitive to where and how fast recharge actually occurs, not where it might be assumed to occur. Dynamic SW-GW interaction zones are precisely where prescribed boundary conditions are most likely to be wrong and most consequential.

Integrated surface-subsurface hydrological modelling with HydroGeoSphere (HGS) is essentially the antithesis of the parsimonious recharge-zone approach. By fully coupling surface water and groundwater in a physically based, variably saturated model, HGS avoids the boundary condition paradox by construction. Recharge is an output from the simulation of precipitation, evapotranspiration, overland flow, and unsaturated zone flow dynamics. In a world where municipalities, mining companies, oil and gas operators, agricultural operations, and regulators are asking questions that a simple recharge zone model structurally cannot answer, perhaps the classical tools are now mismatched to the questions being asked.

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