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An unconfined aquifer has no impermeable barrier immediately above it, such that the water level can rise in response to recharge. A confined aquifer has an overlying impermeable barrier that prevents the water level in the aquifer from rising any higher. An aquifer in the same geologic unit may be confined in one area and unconfined in another.
(unconfined), where S y is the specific yield of the aquifer. Note that the partial differential equation in the unconfined case is non-linear, whereas it is linear in the confined case. For unconfined steady-state flow, this non-linearity may be removed by expressing the PDE in terms of the head squared:
It is recommended to name the SVG file “Groundwater (aquifer, aquitard, 3 type wells).svg”—then the template Vector version available (or Vva) does not need the new image name parameter. Licensing
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 29 January 2025. Water located beneath the ground surface An illustration showing groundwater in aquifers (in blue) (1, 5 and 6) below the water table (4), and three different wells (7, 8 and 9) dug to reach it. Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in ...
Q is the total groundwater discharge ([L 3 ·T −1]; m 3 /s), K is the hydraulic conductivity of the aquifer ([L·T −1]; m/s), dh/dl is the hydraulic gradient ([L·L −1]; unitless), and A is the area which the groundwater is flowing through ([L 2]; m 2) For example, this can be used to determine the flow rate of water flowing along a plane ...
For a confined aquifer or aquitard, storativity is the vertically integrated specific storage value. Specific storage is the volume of water released from one unit volume of the aquifer under one unit decline in head. This is related to both the compressibility of the aquifer and the compressibility of the water itself.
In confined aquifers , the cone of depression is a reduction in the pressure head surrounding the pumped well. When a well is pumped, the water level in the well is lowered. By lowering this water level, a gradient occurs between the water in the surrounding aquifer and the water in the well. Because water flows from high to low water levels or ...
The Dupuit–Forchheimer assumption holds that groundwater flows horizontally in an unconfined aquifer and that the groundwater discharge is proportional to the saturated aquifer thickness. It was formulated by Jules Dupuit and Philipp Forchheimer in the late 1800s to simplify groundwater flow equations for analytical solutions.