NMPWRC November Webinar | Development of a GIS-Based Framework for Assessing Produced Water Contaminant Fate and Transport in New Mexico
Produced water associated with oil and gas operations contains constituents that may migrate through soils and potentially affect groundwater resources. Understanding their fate and transport requires integrating experimentally derived contaminant transport parameters with spatially distributed soil hydraulic information. This research combines laboratory breakthrough experiments, HYDRUS-1D numerical modeling, and geographic information systems (GIS) to investigate the migration of selected produced-water contaminants in New Mexico soils. Laboratory breakthrough curves are used to calibrate contaminant-specific transport and sorption parameters. To characterize spatial variability in soil hydraulic properties, NM-SoilHydro, a statewide geospatial soil hydraulic database, was developed by integrating USDA SSURGO soil information with Rosetta pedotransfer functions. Building on these components, HydrusFT, a QGIS-based modeling framework, integrates calibrated solute transport parameters and location-specific soil hydraulic properties with automated HYDRUS-1D simulations to assess contaminant breakthrough behavior. Together, NM-SoilHydro and HydrusFT provide an integrated framework for spatially informed contaminant transport assessment and uncertainty analysis relevant to produced-water management.
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Ujjwal Marasini, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at New Mexico State University
Ujjwal Marasini is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at New Mexico State University. He holds a master's degree in Water Resources Engineering. His research interests include hydrology, hydraulics, contaminant fate and transport, and water resources management. His work integrates laboratory experiments, numerical modeling, and geospatial analysis to investigate contaminant migration through soils. His current research includes the development of NM-SoilHydro, a statewide soil hydraulic database, and HydrusFT, a GIS-based framework for contaminant transport modeling. He has contributed to peer-reviewed research publications in hydrology and water resources engineering.