Dynamic Evaluation on the Groundwater Flow Process in a River Basin Using the Ensemble Kalman Filter Method with Localization

Abstract

Ordos Plateau is located in a semi-arid area in the northwest part of China, and groundwater water is the major water source to sustain the ecosystem. With the industrial construction and economic development, it is required to manage the groundwater usage reasonable. Several monitoring instruments have been installed to monitor the groundwater dynamics continuously. An ensemble Kalman filter based data assimilation method is developed to use the sequentially available monitoring data to characterize the groundwater system. To improve the algorithm stability and avoid the spurious correlation estimation, a localization function is introduced. The analysis results show the proposed EnKF method can reduce the estimation uncertainty and improve the predictability.