CALIBRATION OF A TRANSIENT TRANSPORT MODEL TO TRITIUM MEASUREMENTS IN RIVERS AND STREAMS IN THE WESTERN LAKE TAUPO CATCHMENT, NEW ZEALAND

Here we present a general approach of calibrating transient transport models to tritium concentrations in river waters developed for the MT3DMS/MODFLOW model of the western Lake Taupo catchment, New Zealand. Tritium is a time-dependent tracer with radioactive half-life of 12.32 years. In the transport model, the tritium input (measured in rain) passes through the groundwater system, and the modelled tritium concentrations are compared to the measured tritium concentrations in the river outlets for the Waihaha, Whanganui, Whareroa, Kuratau and Omori river catchments from 2000–2007. For the Kuratau River, tritium was also measured between 1960 and 1970, which allowed us to fine-tune the transport model. In order to incorporate all surface flows from rivers to small streams, an 80 m uniform grid cell size was selected in the steady-state MODFLOW model for the model area of 1072 km². The groundwater flow model was first calibrated to groundwater levels and stream flow observations. Then, the transport model was calibrated to the measured tritium concentrations in the river waters. The MT3DMS model results show good agreement with the measured tritium values in all five river catchments. Finally, the calibrated MT3DMS model is applied to simulate groundwater ages that are used to construct groundwater age distributions for the river catchments.