Pit Lakes Modelling

Modelling Hydrodynamics and Water Quality of Pit Lakes with PITLAKQ

Mike Müller

Mod­el­ling pit lakes is a com­plex task. The open-source soft­ware PITLAKQ (www.pitlakq.com) allows one to mod­el hydro­dynam­ic pro­cesses in pit lakes includ­ing tem­per­at­ure strat­i­fic­a­tion. Fur­ther­more, trans­port of con­stitu­ents and a vari­ety of chem­ic­al and bio­lo­gic­al reac­tions can be mod­elled. PITLAKQ com­bines the abil­it­ies of CE-QUAL-W2 (www.cee.pdx.edu/w2) and PHREEQC (wwwbrr.cr.usgs.gov/projects/GWC_coupled).

Par­ti­cipants need to be famil­i­ar with the top­ic of pit lakes and their water qual­ity. Basic hydro-geo-chem­ic­al know­ledge is assumed. Prefer­ably, par­ti­cipants should have mod­el­ling exper­i­ence with CE-QUAL-W2, PHREEQC or com­par­able mod­els. They also need to have basic know­ledge of import­ant pit lake pro­cesses. Sol­id PC hand­ling abil­it­ies are neces­sary.

Par­ti­cipants will get login data to an online teach­ing sys­tem, con­sist­ing of a video con­fer­en­cing sys­tem and a mod­el­ling envir­on­ment (Jupy­ter­Hub). This sys­tem has been used by Python Academy for nearly a year. After the course, par­ti­cipants can install PITLAKQ on their own com­puters and used the same tools they learn in the course.

PITLAKQ provides new fea­tures such as dis­trib­uted ground­wa­ter exchange, treat­ment of the lake water with chem­ic­als, and account­ing for the impact of bank erosion on lake water qual­ity.
This work­shop intro­duces PITLAKQ with a hands-on tutori­al of set­ting up and run­ning mod­els. It cov­ers:

• Get­ting famil­i­ar with the teach­ing sys­tem
• Python basics for run­ning mod­els
• Set­ting up and run­ning a hydro­dynam­ic mod­el
• Inter­pret­ing and present­ing hydro­dynam­ic res­ults
• Set­ting up and run­ning a water qual­ity mod­el
• Inter­pret­ing and present­ing water qual­ity res­ults
• Vary­ing the water qual­ity pro­cesses

PITLAKQ solves com­plex prob­lems and offers many more fea­tures than can be covered in the work­shop. The presenter will be glad to answer ques­tions that go bey­ond the con­tent described above. Each par­ti­cipant will receive a com­pre­hens­ive course handout (PDF) and the PITLAKQ soft­ware. After the course, par­ti­cipants will be able to set up and run PITLAKQ mod­els.