Q-Facies: A tool for the quantitative interpretation of groundwater hydrochemical facies

Abstract

This article presents Q-Facies, an open-source Python package for quantitative analysis of hydrochemical facies (HF). HF is widely used to interpret the chemical characteristics of groundwater. However, it is difficult to analyse its spatial or temporal variability due to its qualitative nature and the small number of classes. To avoid these limitations, Q-Facies performs the parametrization of HF based on the calculation of five statistical indices on the Piper diagram: Blau, Standard Distance, Area, Shape and Orientation indices. The latter two allow the identification of ongoing facies-modifying hydrochemical phenomena. The software relies on standard Python libraries, and is available as a GitHub repository.

Keywords

• Hydrochemical facies
• Hydrochemistry
• Variability indices
• Spatiotemporal facies analysis