GMS (Groundwater Modeling System) is water modeling application for building and simulating

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidat ...

models from

Aquaveo Aquaveo is a modeling software company based in Provo, Utah that develops software used to model and simulate groundwater, watershed, and surface water resources. Its main software products include SMS, GMS, WMS, and Arc Hydro Groundwater. Hi ...

. It features 2D and 3D

geostatistics Geostatistics is a branch of statistics focusing on spatial or spatiotemporal datasets. Developed originally to predict probability distributions of ore grades for mining operations, it is currently applied in diverse disciplines including pet ...

stratigraphic Stratigraphy is a branch of geology concerned with the study of rock layers ( strata) and layering (stratification). It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks. Stratigraphy has three related subfields: lithostr ...

modeling and a unique conceptual model approach. Currently supported models include MODFLOW, MODPATH, MT3DMS, RT3D, FEMWATER,

SEEP2D SEEP2D is a 2D seepage analysis program written by Dr. Fred Tracy of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The program is used to analyze water seepage, typically through dams and levees or under sheet piles. "The model is internationall ...

, and

UTEXAS The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. Version 6 introduced the use of

XMDF XMDF (eXtensible Model Data Format) is a library providing a standard format for the geometric data storage of river cross-sections, 2D/ 3D structured and unstructured meshes, geometric paths through space, and associated time data. XMDF uses ...

(eXtensible Model Data Format), which is a compatible extension of

HDF5 Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) is a set of file formats (HDF4, HDF5) designed to store and organize large amounts of data. Originally developed at the U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, it is supported by The HDF Group, a non-p ...

. The purpose of this is to allow internal storage and management of data in a single HDF file, rather than using many flat files.

History

GMS was initially developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s on

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

workstations by the Engineering Computer Graphics Laboratory at

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...

. The development of GMS was funded primarily by The

United States Army Corps of Engineers , colors = , anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day) , battles = , battles_label = Wars , website = , commander1 = ...

and was known—until version 4.0, released in late 1999—as the ''

Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philippin ...

Groundwater Modeling System'', or ''DoD GMS''. It was

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a Computing platform, computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) ...

to Microsoft Windows in the mid 1990s. Version 3.1 was the last version that supported

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V (initially System III) and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrit ...

IRIX IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system ...

OSF/1 OSF/1 is a variant of the Unix operating system developed by the Open Software Foundation during the late 1980s and early 1990s. OSF/1 is one of the first operating systems to have used the Mach kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University, an ...

, and Solaris platforms. Development of GMS—along with WMS and

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

—was transferred to

when it formed in April 2007. A study published in the ''Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics'' in August 2000 stated that "GMS provides an interface to the groundwater flow model, MODFLOW, and the contaminant transport model, MT3D. MODFLOW is a three-dimensional, cell-centered, finite-difference, saturated-flow model capable of both steady-state and transient analyses...These two models, when put together, provide a comprehensive tool for examining groundwater flow and nitrate transport and accumulation". The study was designed to help develop a "permit scheme to effectively manage nitrate pollution of groundwater supplies for communities in rural areas without hindering agricultural production in watersheds".

Version history

Reception

A 2001 report prepared for the Iowa Comprehensive Petroleum Underground Storage Tank Fund Board stated that GMS was "a very user-friendly software package with strong technical support." Raymond H. Johnson, a hydrogeologist with the

US Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, an ...

, called GMS 6.0 "a useful all around groundwater modeling package that offers the advantages of modular purchases, multiple model support, linkages to ArcGIS, conceptual model development, and integrated inversion routines." A 2006 report from the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses in

San Antonio, Texas ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , subdivision_t ...

called GMS "the most sophisticated groundwater modeling software available".

References

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External links

GMS Wiki
Scientific simulation software Science software for Windows Hydrogeology software