The Small Earth Nepal (SEN), in collaboration with Australian Water School (AWS) and Kathmandu Valley Water Supply Management Board (KVWSMB), organized a two-days course on “Introduction to Groundwater Modelling with MODFLOW” on 20th and 21st October 2019 at KVWSMB, Bhaisepati, Lalitpur. The course was partially sponsored by the International Association of Hydrogeologists NSW (IAH NSW) branch. Course materials and webinars were supplied by the AWS, an initiative of International Centre of Excellence in Water Resources Management (ICEWaRM) which runs webinars delivered by highly-regarded international water professionals.

The purpose of this course was to offer the major concepts and applications of groundwater flow modelling using the USGS MODFLOW family program. There were altogether 15 participants representing academia, government agencies, and research organizations. The program began with welcome speech by the President of SEN and researcher at Center for Hydrology, University of Saskatchewan (C4H-Usask), Mr. Dhiraj Pradhananga.

The course was a combination of webinars, lectures and hands-on-exercises. The course was led by Ellen Kwantes, Senior Hydrogeologist at WSP in Sydney, Australia, and an accredited Registered Professional Geoscientist. The webinars were hosted by Dr. Konrad Miotlinski, an instructor for a variety of modelling course for 7 years. With an overview of MODFLOW and ModelMuse, this interactive training allowed the participants to construct numerical groundwater flow models, run simulations, and visualize the results of MODFLOW-2005 family programs using the freely available ModelMuse software.