Distribution of oxygen‐18 and deuterium in river waters across the United States

Abstract

Abstract:Reconstruction of continental palaeoclimate and palaeohydrology is currently hampered by limited information about isotopic patterns in the modern hydrologic cycle. To remedy this situation and to provide baseline data for other isotope hydrology studies, more than 4800, depth-and width-integrated, stream samples from 391 selected sites within the USGS National Stream Quality Accounting Network (NASQAN) and Hydrologic Benchmark Network (HBN) were analysed for υ 18 O and υ 2 H (http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/ofr/ofr00-160/pdf/ofr00-160.pdf). Each site was sampled bimonthly or quarterly for 2Ð5 to 3 years between 1984 and 1987. The ability of this dataset to serve as a proxy for the isotopic composition of modern precipitation in the USA is supported by the excellent agreement between the river dataset and the isotopic compositions of adjacent precipitation monitoring sites, the strong spatial coherence of the distributions of υ 18 O and υ 2 H, the good correlations of the isotopic compositions with climatic parameters, and the good agreement between the 'national' meteoric water line (MWL) generated from unweighted analyses of samples from the 48 contiguous states of υ 2 H D 8Ð11υ 18 O C 8Ð99 r 2 D 0Ð98 and the unweighted global MWL of sites from the Global Network for Isotopes in Precipitation (GNIP) of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) of υ 2 H D 8Ð17υ 18 O C 10Ð35. The national MWL is composed of water samples that arise in diverse local conditions where the local meteoric water lines (LMWLs) usually have much lower slopes. Adjacent sites often have similar LMWLs, allowing the datasets to be combined into regional MWLs. The slopes of regional MWLs probably reflect the humidity of the local air mass, which imparts a distinctive evaporative isotopic signature to rainfall and hence to stream samples. Deuterium excess values range from 6 to 15‰ in the eastern half of the USA, along the northwest coast and on the Colorado Plateau. In the rest of the USA, these values range from 2 to 6‰, with strong spatial correlations with regional aridity. The river samples have successfully integrated the spatial variability in the meteorological cycle and provide the best available dataset on the spatial distributions of υ 18 O and υ 2 H values of meteoric waters in the USA.

Impacts of Shale Gas Wastewater Disposal on Water Quality in Western Pennsylvania

“…20 The 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios of the wastewater effluents ranged from 0.7101 to 0.7111 and are consistent with the isotopic ratios of the Marcellus brines (Figure 2). concentrations of dissolved salts in the effluent by the total discharged volume of effluent.…”

Willamette River Basin surface water isoscape (δ18O and δ2H): temporal changes of source water within the river

“…Although latitude can explain significant amounts of spatial variation in precipitation isotopes (Bowen and Wilkinson 2002, Bowen and Revenaugh 2003, Dutton et al 2005, Lechler and Niemi 2011, river water isotopes (Kendall and Coplen 2001) and groundwater isotopes (Wassenaar et al 2009), it was not important within our study area because of the limited range in latitude (43.6 and 44.98 N) and large elevational influences (Lechler and Niemi 2011).…”

Pedothem carbonates reveal anomalous North American atmospheric circulation 70,000–55,000 years ago

“…The WR contains a suite of Pleistocene fluvial terraces capped by soils that have persisted through multiple glacial-interglacial climates (3,4,11 (12)(13)(14). The C isotope composition of pedogenic carbonate (δ 13 C c ) is controlled by the proportion of C3-to C4-type vegetation and the soil respiration rate, which are both affected by mean annual temperature and mean annual precipitation (MAP) amount (15,16).…”