Screening Level Subsidence Modeling Using MODFLOW

The most effective subsidence investigation, monitoring and mitigation systems consist of costly data collection with broad spatial and temporal coverage.  Many sites susceptible to subsidence do not have the luxury of extensive data or the time and funding to collect it.  Predictive models have often been based on analytical methods due to the decreased input data requirements.  However, the USGS has developed subsidence modeling packages for MODFLOW that can be efficient and effective subsidence predictors, even given limited data.  This presentation demonstrates that one dimensional MODFLOW subsidence models can be used as screening level subsidence evaluation and can provide valuable information on what kinds of additional data need to be collected, and where it should be collected.