Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

MODFLOW-NWT model data sets for simulating effects of groundwater withdrawals on streamflows in Northwestern Chippewa County

Metadata Updated: November 26, 2025

A new groundwater flow model for western Chippewa County, Wisconsin has been developed by the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey (WGNHS) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). An analytic element GFLOW model was constructed and calibrated to generate hydraulic boundary conditions for the perimeter of the more detailed three-dimensional MODFLOW-NWT model. This three-dimensional model uses the USGS MODFLOW-NWT finite difference code, a standalone version of MODFLOW-2005 that incorporates the Newton (NWT) solver. The model conceptualizes the hydrogeology of western Chippewa County as a six-layer system which includes several hydrostratigraphic units. The model explicitly simulates groundwater-surface-water interaction with streamflow routing. Model input included recent estimates of aquifer hydraulic conductivities and a spatial groundwater recharge distribution developed using a GIS-based soil-water-balance model for the study area. Groundwater withdrawals from pumping were simulated for 269 high-capacity wells across the entire model domain, which includes western Chippewa County and portions of eastern Dunn County and southeastern Barron County. Model calibration used the parameter estimation code PEST, and calibration targets included heads and stream flows. Calibration f focused on the period from during 2011 to 2013 when the largest amount of calibration data were available. Following calibration, the model was applied to two distinct scenarios; one evaluating hydraulic impacts of more intensive industrial sand mining and the second evaluating the hydraulicimpacts of more intensive agricultural irrigation practices. Each scenario was developed with input by Chippewa County and a stakeholder group established for this study, and designed to represent reasonable future build-out conditions for both mining and irrigatedagriculture. The mining scenario underscores the potential hydraulic impacts related to changing land-use practices (i.e., hilltops and farm land becoming sand mines), while the irrigated agriculture scenario illustrates the potential hydraulic impacts of intensifying existing land-use practices (i.e., installing new wells to irrigate farm fields).

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 26, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 26, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-504e59f7-883b-42e9-81fe-4cd4001ce557
Data Last Modified 2020-11-17T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 59d4c2a6-98e7-4f58-b31e-cfd600ac3865
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 1fd673269c2a269f3a5eb6daf04434eb0963a821f03ac9dc5b04eee741d02629
Source Schema Version 1.1

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.