Determining mean transit times of groundwater flow systems

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Title Determining mean transit times of groundwater flow systems
Publication Type dissertation
School or College College of Mines & Earth Sciences
Department Geology & Geophysics
Author Stolp, Bernard Jan
Date 2014-05
Description Water is the elementary component of life on Earth, and quantifying this resource is critical to understanding ecosystem viability on planetary, continental, and local scales. In a simplified partition of the Earth's freshwater resources, 75% is ice at the north and south poles, 25% is groundwater, and 0.01% exists in lakes and streams. Mean transit time is a robust description of groundwater volume within the discrete aquifers that together make up the 25% of Earth's freshwater. Mean transit time can be estimated using environmental tracer concentrations in springs and gaining streams. That is because springs and streams are locations where groundwater flow paths naturally converge. Converging flowpaths create discharge that is a flow‐weighted mixture of water from the contributing aquifer. The age of that flow-weighted mixture is a good measure of the mean transit time of water as it discharges from the contributing aquifer. Mean transit time can be directly used to estimate the volume of groundwater storage in the aquifer. Although simple in principle, there are several important topics that need to be considered when collecting and dating a broad mixture of flow paths. They include 1) the necessity for a basic conceptual perception of the investigated aquifer, 2) the nonconservative aspect of most age-dating environmental tracers once exposed to the atmosphere, and 3) the importance of estimating a transit-time distribution. These specific topics are discussed in this dissertation.
Type Text
Publisher University of Utah
Subject Dissolved gases; Flowpath integration along gaining streams; Gas exchange; Mean transit time
Dissertation Institution University of Utah
Dissertation Name Doctor of Philosophy
Language eng
Rights Management Copyright © Bernard Jan Stolp 2014
Format application/pdf
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 4,368,723 bytes
Identifier etd3/id/2786
ARK ark:/87278/s62n89f8
Setname ir_etd
ID 196359
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s62n89f8
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