Modelling land subsidence due to groundwater pumping/recharging in the Las Vegas valley

A model for ground settlement and swelling occurring in Las Vegas Spring Preserve due to groundwater level changes has been developed. A FORTRAN code that uses the finite element method has been prepared. The computer code calculates the hydraulic head in the aquifer resulting from pumping and recharging of the wells. The settlement or swelling of the ground level at each node point is calculated based on hydraulic conditions. The computed hydraulic head and settlement resulted between January 1990 and December 1999 have been compared to the observed static heads and the measured settlement.;The sensitivity of the settlement to each parameter used in the model was investigated. Predicted settlement values between January 2000 and December 2004 for different pumping and pumping-recharging cycles have been calculated.