An entropy based approach is applied to identify redundant wells in the network. In the process of this research, groundwater monitoring network is considered as a communication system with a capability to transfer information, and monitoring wells are taken as information receivers. The concepts of entropy and mutual information are then applied to measure the information content of individual monitoring well and information relationship between monitoring well pairs. The efficiency of information transfer among monitoring wells is the basis to judge the redundancy in the network. And the capacity of the monitoring wells to provide information on groundwater is the point of evaluation to identify redundant monitoring wells. This approach is demonstrated using the data from a regional scale groundwater network in Hebei plain, China. The result shows that the entropy based method is recommendable in optimizing groundwater networks, especially for those within media of higher heterogeneities and anisotropies.
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