Consequently, groundwater resources in the Kerdi-Shirazi plain will urgently need active management to minimize the effects of ongoing water level decline and to prevent saltwater intrusion and desertification in the region. The results of the groundwater modelling suggest that water levels on the Kerdi-Shirazi plain will continue to decline over the forecast period with decreases of 34.51, 36.57 and 33.58 m being predicted, respectively, for climate scenarios A1B, A2 and B1. The results of the climate modelling suggest that the Kerdi-Shirazi plain will experience an increase in minimum temperature and maximum temperature of, respectively, between 0.03 and 0.47, and 0.32–0.45 ☌ for this time period. To determine the potential impacts of climate change on groundwater levels in the region, the groundwater model GMS was coupled with the atmospheric circulation model HADCM3 using scenarios A1B, A2 and B1 for the period 2016–2030. Due to the overuse of groundwater resources and the multi-year drought in the Kerdi-Shirazi plain in Iran, some land subsidence and a drop in groundwater levels has taken place, and without active management, further degradation of the groundwater resource is possible under predicted future climate change scenarios in the country. It is important to predict how groundwater levels in an aquifer will respond to various climate change scenarios to effectively plan for how groundwater resources will be used in the future. This, in addition, eases the development of conceptual groundwater flow models, the model calibration process and potentially improves the simulation results.

In both modelling locations, the detailed geological modelling greatly helped to discern different hydraulic conductivity zones that are based on different geological materials. The data from the GSI3D model in Luikonlahti was first manipulated in ArcGIS to make it amenable in FeFlow®. The data from the GSI3D model in Patamäki was exported as ASCII grid files directly to GMS in order to delineate hydrogeological features prior to groundwater flow modelling.

Geological models for two sites in Finland, an esker aquifer at Patamäki and a mine site in Luikonlahti, were constructed using dedicated 3D geological modelling software GSI3D. This paper presents the data integration between GSI3D (Geological Surveying and Investigation in 3 Dimensions) and groundwater flow modelling software GMS version 7.0 (Groundwater Modelling Systems) and FeFlow®. The procedures and workflows are not usually published. Data integration between different software is routinely needed in order to create suitable data formats or necessary data manipulation prior to importing the data.

Feflow 7 crack