MODFLOW 6 — The Complete Guide: Free Groundwater Flow and Solute Transport Modelling
MODFLOW 6 is the current generation of the groundwater model from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). It solves three-dimensional flow by finite differences, and it is the engine almost every commercial package in the field is built around. As US government software it is in the public domain, with open source code.
MODFLOW 6
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
The world standard for groundwater flow and solute transport modelling, from the USGS.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Groundwater flow — aquifer layers, conductivity, storage and boundary conditions.
- Hydrologic packages — wells, recharge, streams, drains and evapotranspiration.
- Flexible grids — rectangular, or unstructured grids refined around wells and streams.
- Coupled models — a coarse regional model and a detailed local one in the same run.
- Transport — a solute transport model, and in recent versions heat transport as well.
How to use it
Input is text files, so in practice you work through an interface. The common free graphical interface is ModelMuse, also from the USGS. If you prefer code, the FloPy library in Python builds, runs and plots models — a convenient route for sensitivity analysis and many scenarios.
Related tools
For chemical reactions in groundwater — PHREEQC. To prepare layers and maps — QGIS. For more programs from the same agency — USGS Software.
ModelMuse
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
The free graphical interface to MODFLOW — build the model with a mouse instead of text files.
Get it from the vendor
PHREEQC
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Aqueous geochemical calculations — equilibrium, dissolution, precipitation and reactive transport.
Get it from the vendor
QGIS
QGIS.org
Open-source GIS for spatial analysis, layer work and map production.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
MODFLOW 6 is the professional foundation of groundwater modelling — free, open and accepted by authorities and consultants worldwide.