The Science

A key component of understanding the connection between groundwater quality and the vadose zone (the water unsaturated region above the water table) is the movement of water from the surface to the aquifer (recharge). Measurements of the natural isotopic composition of strontium (Sr) were used to assess the effect of local topography on groundwater recharge across a semi-dry riparian floodplain in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

The Impact

This work demonstrates the use of ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr (Sr isotopes) to measure groundwater recharge through analysis of porewater and groundwater samples from the vadose zone. The study resulted in an understanding how the microtopography of the Rifle Site affects the hyper-local variation in the downward movement of vadose-zone porewater that may carry nutrients and contaminants to groundwater.

Summary

Over time, loose sand, clay, silt, gravel or similar unconsolidated, or “alluvial” material is deposited by water into alluvial aquifers. Recharge of alluvial aquifers is a key component in understanding the interaction between floodplain vadose zone biogeochemistry and groundwater quality. The Rifle Site (a former U-mill tailings site) adjacent to the Colorado River is a well-established field laboratory that has been used for over a decade for the study of biogeochemical processes in the vadose zone and aquifer. This site is exemplary of both a riparian floodplain in a semiarid region and a post-remediation U-tailings site. The authors use Sr isotopic data for groundwater and vadose zone porewater samples to build a mixing model for the fractional contribution of vadose zone porewater (i.e., recharge) to the aquifer and to assess its distribution across the site. The vadose zone porewater contribution to the aquifer ranged systematically from 0% to 38% and appears to be controlled largely by the microtopography of the site. The area-weighted average contribution across the site was 8%, corresponding to a net recharge of 7.5 cm.  Given a groundwater transport time across the site of ~1.5 to 3 years, this translates to a recharge rate between 5 and 2.5 cm/yr, and, with the average precipitation to the site, implies a loss from the vadose zone due to evapotranspiration of 83% to 92%.

Principal Investigator

Susan Hubbard
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
sshubbard@lbl.gov

Program Manager

Paul Bayer
U.S. Department of Energy, Biological and Environmental Research (SC-33)
Environmental System Science
paul.bayer@science.doe.gov

Funding

This work was conducted as part of the Genomes to Watershed Scientific Focus Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and was supported by the Subsurface Biogeochemical Research program of the Office of Biological and Environmental Research, within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, under Contract Number DE-ACO2-05CH11231.

References