Influence of Spatial Scales on the Performance of Saturated Subsurface Flow and Transport Models

Numerical modeling of saturated subsurface flow and transport has been widely used inthe past using different numerical schemes such as finite difference and finite element methods.Such modeling often involves discretization of the problem in spatial and temporal scales. The choiceof the spatial and temporal scales for a modeling scenario is often not straightforward. For example,a basin-scale saturated flow and transport analysis demands larger spatial and temporal scales thana meso-scale study, which in turn has larger scales compared to a pore-scale study. The choice ofspatial-scale is often dictated by the computational capabilities of the modeler as well as the availability of fine-scale data. In this study, we analyze the impact of different spatial scales andscaling procedures on saturated subsurface flow and transport simulations.