On the stream function for variable‐density groundwater flow

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Abstract
When the stream function is used to describe variable‐density ground water flow, it should be defined in terms of mass flux. The historic use of the stream function describes volume flux and implicitly invokes the Boussinesq assumption. A comparison of the flow equations for mass‐based and volume‐based stream functions indicates that this assumption can lead to significant errors in the calculated flow field, especially when flow parallels large density gradients.