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About GWHAT

GWHAT (Ground-Water Hydrograph Analysis Toolbox) is a free and open source application whose main objective is to support the interpretation of water levels measured in observation wells (hydrographs) to estimate groundwater recharge with a method combining a daily soil moisture balance and an aquifer water budget applicable to unconfined aquifers. The method is described in detail in the PhD thesis of Jean-Sébastien Gosselin available here. Application of the recharge assessment method requires a well hydrograph and weather data measured daily. A long-duration hydrograph (more than 5 years) provides more constraints on recharge assessment. Recharge is assessed for the period for which weather data are available and it is not limited to the period of available water levels. Results are produced in tabular and graphical formats.

Furthermore, GWHAT includes a tool to easily calculate the barometric response function (BRF) of wells, provided that barometric and earth tide data are available along with the water level data. BRF calculations are performed with the KGS Barometric Response Function Software (KGS_BRF), which implements the method described by Butler et al. (2010). The calculated BRF can be used to determine the type of aquifer (unconfined, semi-confined, or confined) in which wells are installed (Rasmussen and Crawford, 1997, Spane, 2002) and thus provides a reliable way to identify wells that are under unconfined conditions and which can be used to assess groundwater recharge with the method implemented in GWHAT.

GWHAT is written in the Python 3 programming language and is currently maintained and developed by Jean-Sébastien Gosselin at INRS-ETE. If you encounter any problems or errors during program execution, have any questions, or have specific suggestions on how to improve GWHAT, please open an issue in our issues tracker.

Last edited: 01/04/2021