Author(s)

Kouamé Kan Jean¹, Aké Gabriel Etienne¹, Koblan Armel Kouadio¹, Djé Kouakou Bernard², Jourda Jean Patrice¹

¹Water and Environment Sciences and Technical Laboratory (LSTEE), UFR of Earth Sciences and Mineral Resources, University of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
²Department of Climatology and Meteorological Applications, National Meteorological Direction, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

Located in the southeastern of Côte d’Ivoire, Bonoua aquifer contains an enormous groundwater potential. The new boreholes have been realized in this region to support the water supply of the populations. Moreover, in this region, agriculture is the main activity, whose pesticides used to guarantee the productivity, constitute a threat for groundwater. Thus, this study was undertaken in order to design a hydrogeological model able to simulate the piezometry of the Bonoua aquifer and determine the perimeters of protection for the new boreholes. The model, carried out under the Visual Modflow interface, was designed in steady-state mode and calibrated manually from the piezometry of the year 2000. The value of the standardized root mean squared residual of 4.86% (<10%) allows to say that the calibration obtained is considered satisfactory. Also, the correlation coefficient between observed and simulated heads of 0.95 permits to confirm a good calibration of the model. Perimeters of protection values were determined by simulating the paths of the virtual particles of water from the calibrated model. The simulations show that generally, the groundwater of Bonoua aquifer flows from north to south and the piezometric levels obtained vary between 65 m in the north and 5 m in the south. Upstream radius of the closed perimeters of protection calculated from the model varies from 172 to 482 m. However, those of distant perimeters of protection vary from 2877 to 6441 m.

Boreholes, Hydrogeological Modeling, Perimeters of Protection, Visual Modflow, Bonoua Aquifer

Jean, K. , Etienne, A. , Kouadio, K. , Bernard, D. and Patrice, J. (2017) Perimeters of Protection Demarcation for New Boreholes of Bonoua Aquifer (Southeastern, Côte d’Ivoire) through Hydrogeological Modeling. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 5, 118-138. doi: 10.4236/gep.2017.511009.