The French critical zone initiative, called OZCAR (Observatoires de la Zone Critique-Application et Recherche or Critical Zone Observatories-Application and Research) is a National Research Infrastructure (RI). OZCAR-RI is a network of instrumented sites, bringing together 21 pre-existing research observatories monitoring different compartments of the zone situated between "the rock and the sky," the Earth's skin or critical zone (CZ), over the long term. These observatories are regionally based and have specific initial scientific questions, monitoring strategies, databases, and modeling activities. The diversity of OZCAR-RI observatories and sites is well representative of the heterogeneity of the CZ and of the scientific communities studying it. Despite this diversity, all OZCAR-RI sites share a main overarching mandate, which is to monitor, understand, and predict ("earthcast") the fluxes of water and matter of the Earth's near surface and how they will change in response to the "new climatic regime." The vision for OZCAR strategic development aims at designing an open infrastructure, building a national CZ community able to share a systemic representation of the CZ , and educating a new generation of scientists more apt to tackle the wicked problem of the Anthropocene. OZCAR articulates around: (i) a set of common scientific questions and cross-cutting scientific activities using the wealth of OZCAR-RI observatories, (ii) an ambitious instrumental development program, and (iii) a better interaction between data and models to integrate the different time and spatial scales. Internationally, OZCAR-RI aims at strengthening the CZ community by providing a model of organization for pre-existing observatories and by offering CZ instrumented sites. OZCAR is one of two French mirrors of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructure (eLTER-ESFRI) project.
Local groundwater levels in South India are falling alarmingly. In the semi-arid crystalline Deccan plateau area, agricultural production relies on groundwater resources. Downscaled Global Climate Model (GCM) data are used to force a spatially distributed agro-hydrological model in order to evaluate Climate Change (CC) effects on local groundwater extraction (GWE). The slight increase of precipitation may alleviate current groundwater depletion on average, despite the increased evaporation due to warming. Nevertheless, projected climatic extremes create worse GWE shortages than for present climate. Local conditions may lead to opposing impacts on GWE, from increases to decreases (+/−20 mm/year), for a given spatially homogeneous CC forcing. Areas vulnerable to CC in terms of irrigation apportionment are thus identified. Our results emphasize the importance of accounting for local characteristics (water harvesting systems and maximal aquifer capacity versus GWE) in developing measures to cope with CC impacts in the South Indian region.
International audienceThe comparison between contemporary and long-term weathering has been carried out in the Small Experimental Watershed (SEW) of Nsimi, South Cameroon in order to quantify the export fluxes of major and trace elements and the residence time of the lateritic weathering cover. We focus on the hillside system composed of a thick lateritic weathering cover topped by a soil layer. This study is built on the recent improvements of the hillside hydrological functioning and on the analyses of major and trace elements. The mass balance calculation at the weathering horizon scale performed with the parent rock as reference indicates (i) strong depletion profiles for alkalis (Na, K, Rb) and alkaline earths (Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba), (ii) moderate depletion profiles for Si, P, Cd, Cu, Zn, Ni and Co, (iii) depletion/enrichment profiles for Al, Ga, Ge, Sn, Pb, LREE, HREE, Y, U, Fe, V, Cr, Mn. It is noteworthy that (i) Mn and Ce are not significantly redistributed according to oxidative processes as it is the case for Fe, V and Cr, and (ii) Ge is fractionated compared to silica with enrichment in Fe-rich horizons. The calculations performed for the topsoil with iron crust as parent material reference reveal that the degradation of the iron crust is accompanied by the loss of most of the constituting elements, among which are those specifically accumulated as the redox sensitive elements (Fe, V, Cr) and iron oxide related elements like Th. The overall current elemental fluxes from the hillside system at the springs and the seepage zones are extremely low due to the inert lateritic mineralogy. 94% of the whole Na flux generated from the hillside corrected from atmospheric deposits (77 mol/ha/yr) represents the current weathering rates of plagioclase (oligoclase) in the system, the other remaining 6% may be attributed to the dissolution of hornblende. The silica hillside flux is 300 mol/ha/yr and can be mostly attributed to the plagioclase and kaolinite dissolution. Al and Ga are exported from the lateritic regolith and maybe due to the dissolution of kaolinite crystals. Compared to the other immobile elements (Zr, Hf, Nb and Th), Ti is significantly exported. Among redox-sensitive elements (Fe, V, Cr, Mn, Ce), only Ce and Mn are exported out of the hillside system. The other elements (Fe, V, Cr) are likely able to be mobilized but over a short distance only. Rb , Sr, Ba, Ni, Cu, Zn are affected by export processes. LREE and Y are exported but in very low amounts (in the range from µmol/ha/yr to mmol/ha/yr) while HREE and U are exported in negligible quantities. A first attempt is carried out to compare the mature ridge top profile from Nsimi SEW with the immature ridge top weathering profile from the Mule Hole SEW (South India), developed on similar granodioritic basement, in order to get deeper insight into (i) the contemporary saprolite production rates and (ii) the combined effect of precipitation (in terms of Mean Annual Rainfall, MAR) and evapotranspiration on the aggressiveness of the draining solutions. Consider...
International audience13 An innovative approach for regionalizing the 3-D effective-porosity field is presented and 14 applied to two large, overexploited and deeply weathered crystalline aquifers located in 15 southern India. The method derives from earlier work on regionalizing a 2-D effective-16 porosity field in that part of an aquifer where the water table fluctuates, which is now 17 extended over the entire aquifer using a 3-D approach. A method based on geological and 18 geophysical surveys has also been developed for mapping the weathering profile layers 19 (saprolite and fractured layers). The method for regionalizing 3-D effective porosity 20 combines: water-table fluctuation and groundwater budget techniques at various cell sizes 21 with the use of satellite based data (for groundwater abstraction), the structure of the 22 weathering profile and geostatistical techniques. The approach is presented in detail for the 23 Kudaliar watershed (983 km 2), and tested on the 730 km 2 Anantapur watershed. At watershed 24 scale, the effective porosity of the aquifer ranges from 0.5% to 2% in Kudaliar and between 25 0.3% and 1% in Anantapur, which agrees with earlier works. Results show that: i) depending 26 on the geology and on the structure of the weathering profile, the vertical distribution of 27 effective porosity can be very different, and that the fractured layers in crystalline aquifers are 28 not necessarily characterized by a rapid decrease in effective porosity; and ii) that the lateral 29 variations in effective porosity can be larger than the vertical ones. These variations suggest 30 that within a same weathering profile the density of open fractures and/or degree of 31 weathering in the fractured zone may significantly varies from a place to another. 32 The proposed method provides information on the spatial distribution of effective porosity 33 which is of prime interest in terms of flux and contaminant transport in crystalline aquifers. 34 Implications for mapping groundwater storage and scarcity are also discussed, which should 35 help in improving groundwater resource management strategies. 36 3
The influence of the pedogenic and climatic contexts on the formation and preservation of pedogenic carbonates in a climosequence in the Western Ghats (Karnataka Plateau, South West India) has been studied. Along the climosequence, the current mean annual rainfall (MAR) varies within a 80 km transect from 6000 mm at the edge of the Plateau to 500 mm inland. Pedogenic carbonates occur in the MAR range of 500-1200 mm. In the semi-arid zone (MAR: 500-900 mm), carbonates occur (i) as thick hardpan calcretes on pediment slopes and (ii) as nodular horizons in polygenic black soils (i.e. vertisols). In the sub-humid zone (MAR: 900-1500 mm), pedogenic carbonates are disseminated in the black soil matrices either as loose, irregular and friable nodules of millimetric size or as indurated botryoidal nodules of centimetric to pluricentimetric size. They also occur at the top layers of the saprolite either as disseminated pluricentimetric indurated nodules or carbonate-cemented lumps of centimetric to decimetric size.Chemical and isotopic ( 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) compositions of the carbonate fraction were determined after leaching with 0.25 N HCl. The corresponding residual fractions containing both primary minerals and authigenic clays were digested separately and analyzed. The trend defined by the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr signatures of both labile carbonate fractions and corresponding residual fractions indicates that a part of the labile carbonate fraction is genetically linked to the local soil composition. Considering the residual fraction of each sample as the most likely lithogenic source of Ca in carbonates, it is estimated that from 24% to 82% (55% on average) of Ca is derived from local bedrock weathering, leading to a consumption of an equivalent proportion of atmospheric CO 2 . These values indicate that climatic conditions were humid enough to allow silicate weathering: MAR at the time of carbonate formation likely ranged from 400 to 700 mm, which is 2-to 3-fold less than the current MAR at these locations.The Sr, U and Mg contents and the ( 234 U/ 238 U) activity ratio in the labile carbonate fraction help to understand the conditions of carbonate formation. The relatively high concentrations of Sr, U and Mg in black soil carbonates may indicate fast 0016-7037/$ -see front matter Ó Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 74 (2010) 7059-7085 growth and accumulation compared to carbonates in saprolite, possibly due to a better confinement of the pore waters which is supported by their high ( 234 U/ 238 U) signatures, and/or to higher content of dissolved carbonates in the pore waters. The occurrence of Ce, Mn and Fe oxides in the cracks of carbonate reflects the existence of relatively humid periods after carbonate formation. The carbonate ages determined by the U-Th method range from 1.33 ± 0.84 kyr to 7.5 ± 2.7 kyr and to a cluster of five ages around 20 kyr, i.e. the Last Glacial Maximum period. The young occurrences are only located in the black soils, which therefore constitute sensitive environments for trapping and retaining atmosphe...
In fractured media, solute transport is controlled by advection in open and connected fractures and by matrix diffusion that may be enhanced by chemical weathering of the fracture walls. These phenomena may lead to non-Fickian dispersion characterized by early tracer arrival time, late-time tailing on the breakthrough curves and potential scale effect on transport processes. Here we investigate the scale dependency of these processes by analyzing a series of convergent and push-pull tracer experiments with distance of investigation ranging from 4m to 41m in shallow fractured granite. The small and intermediate distances convergent experiments display a non-Fickian tailing, characterized by a -2 power law slope. However, the largest distance experiment does not display a clear power law behavior and indicates possibly two main pathways. The push-pull experiments show breakthrough curve tailing decreases as the volume of investigation increases, with a power law slope ranging from -3 to -2.3 from the smallest to the largest volume. The multipath model developed by Becker and Shapiro (2003) is used here to evaluate the hypothesis of the independence of flow pathways. The multipath model is found to explain the convergent data, when increasing local dispersivity and reducing the number of pathways with distance which suggest a transition from non-Fickian to Fickian transport at fracture scale. However, this model predicts an increase of tailing with push-pull distance, while the experiments show the opposite trend. This inconsistency may suggest the activation of cross channel mass transfer at larger volume of investigation, which leads to non-reversible heterogeneous advection with scale. This transition from independent channels to connected channels when the volume of investigation increases suggest that both convergent and push-pull breakthrough curves can inform the existence of characteristic length scales.
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