English abstract
Groundwater is an essential supply of freshwater that is stored in different aquifer
systems around the globe. The demand for this subsurface water is increasing compared
to the last few decades due to population growth. Groundwater withdrawal has become
important for crop irrigation in semi-arid countries because of a lack of precipitation and
an insufficient number of surface water bodies. The process of over-abstraction, where
the mean volume of withdrawal exceeds the average volume of recharge, results in a
decrease in water tables, posing a significant risk to the existence of subsurface waterdependent ecosystems. The groundwater system should be properly managed to avoid
negative sequences of over-pumping by monitoring and recording the pumping rates and
controlling illegal pumping activities in private wells. The purpose of this study is to
perform an experimental investigation, followed by MODFLOW simulations, to evaluate
the efficiency of the experimental study in estimating unknown pumping rates of
groundwater and hydraulic conductivity of the aquifer by utilising four pumping
scenarios. Lastly, develop a helpful method to identify unknown pumping rates by
estimating hydraulic conductivity values using hydraulic head readings from the
experimental investigations. The outcomes suggested that the experimental data was
consistent with the prediction made by the model in all four pumping cases. Where the
R² values varied between 0.775 and 0.839 and the RMS values varied between 0.007 m
and 0.008 m. Furthermore, an accurate estimate of hydraulic conductivity values was
obtained, allowing for the successful estimation of pumping rates utilizing hydraulic head
readings from several observation wells.
