Entropy based groundwater monitoring network design considering spatial distribution of annual recharge

Abstract This study explores the inclusion of a groundwater recharge based design objective and the impact it has on the design of optimum groundwater monitoring networks. The study was conducted in the Hamilton, Halton, and Credit Valley regions of Ontario, Canada, in which the existing Ontario Provincial Groundwater Monitoring Network was augmented with additional monitoring wells. The Dual Entropy-Multiobjective Optimization (DEMO) model was used in these analyses. The value of using this design objective is rooted in the information contained within the estimated recharge. Recharge requires knowledge of climate, geomorphology, and geology of the area, thus using this objective function can help account for these physical characteristics. Two sources of groundwater recharge data were examined and compared, the first was calculated using the Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS), and the second was an aggregation of recharge found using both the PRMS and Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSP-F). The entropy functions are used to identify optimal trade-offs between the maximum information content and the minimum shared information between the monitoring wells. The recharge objective will help to quantify hydrological characteristics of the vadose zone, and thus provide more information to the optimization algorithm. Results show that by including recharge as a design objective, the spatial coverage of the monitoring network can be improved. The study also highlights the flexibility of DEMO and its ability to incorporate additional design objectives such as the groundwater recharge.