PeerJ (Oct 2014)

Complex groundwater flow systems as traveling agent models

  • Oliver López Corona,
  • Pablo Padilla,
  • Oscar Escolero,
  • Tomas González,
  • Eric Morales-Casique,
  • Luis Osorio-Olvera

DOI
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.557
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2
p. e557

Abstract

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Analyzing field data from pumping tests, we show that as with many other natural phenomena, groundwater flow exhibits complex dynamics described by 1/f power spectrum. This result is theoretically studied within an agent perspective. Using a traveling agent model, we prove that this statistical behavior emerges when the medium is complex. Some heuristic reasoning is provided to justify both spatial and dynamic complexity, as the result of the superposition of an infinite number of stochastic processes. Even more, we show that this implies that non-Kolmogorovian probability is needed for its study, and provide a set of new partial differential equations for groundwater flow.

Keywords