The imprint of climate and geology on the residence times of groundwater

Maxwell, R. M.; Condon, Laura E.; Kollet, Stefan; Maher, Kate; Haggerty, R.; Forrester, M. M.

doi:10.1002/2015gl066916

Cited by 98 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Spatially distributed, continuum-based hydrological models (Hrachowitz & Clark, 2017) are also being increasingly used to simulate time-varying TTDs by tracking the age of particles of water as they flow through the catchment (Davies et al, 2013;Maxwell et al, 2016;Danesh-Yazdi et al, 2018;Remondi et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2018;Figure 3d. In these models, mixing hypotheses can be formulated at smaller scales.…”

Section: 1029/2018rg000633mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Demographics of Water: A Review of Water Ages in the Critical Zone

Sprenger

Stumpp

Weiler

et al. 2019

Reviews of Geophysics

235

214

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The time that water takes to travel through the terrestrial hydrological cycle and the critical zone is of great interest in Earth system sciences with broad implications for water quality and quantity. Most water age studies to date have focused on individual compartments (or subdisciplines) of the hydrological cycle such as the unsaturated or saturated zone, vegetation, atmosphere, or rivers. However, recent studies have shown that processes at the interfaces between the hydrological compartments (e.g., soil‐atmosphere or soil‐groundwater) govern the age distribution of the water fluxes between these compartments and thus can greatly affect water travel times. The broad variation from complete to nearly absent mixing of water at these interfaces affects the water ages in the compartments. This is especially the case for the highly heterogeneous critical zone between the top of the vegetation and the bottom of the groundwater storage. Here, we review a wide variety of studies about water ages in the critical zone and provide (1) an overview of new prospects and challenges in the use of hydrological tracers to study water ages, (2) a discussion of the limiting assumptions linked to our lack of process understanding and methodological transfer of water age estimations to individual disciplines or compartments, and (3) a vision for how to improve future interdisciplinary efforts to better understand the feedbacks between the atmosphere, vegetation, soil, groundwater, and surface water that control water ages in the critical zone.

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Section: 1029/2018rg000633mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Demographics of Water: A Review of Water Ages in the Critical Zone

Sprenger

Stumpp

Weiler

et al. 2019

Reviews of Geophysics

235

214

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Surface and subsurface flow are coupled by the 2-D diffusive or kinematic wave equation (Equation 3), where q r is a source/sink rate (LT À1 ) and v is the depth-averaged surface-water velocity (L/T) (Ashby and Falgout, 1995;Jones and Woodward, 2001;Kollet and Maxwell, 2006). PF's parallel structure and option for a terrain-following grid (TFG) make it highly suitable for high resolution and complex terrain (Engdahl and Maxwell, 2015;Maxwell, 2013), and it has been applied and validated from the hillslope (Atchley and Maxwell, 2011;Meyerhoff and Maxwell, 2011;Mikkelson et al, 2013) to the continental scale (Condon and Maxwell, 2015;Maxwell et al, 2016).…”

Section: Integrated Hydrology Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hydrogeological response to climate change in alpine hillslopes

Markovich

Maxwell

Fogg

2016

Hydrological Processes

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Abstract:Climate change threatens water resources in snowmelt-dependent regions by altering the fraction of snow and rain and spurring an earlier snowmelt season. The bulk of hydrological research has focused on forecasting response in streamflow volumes and timing to a shrinking snowpack; however, the degree to which subsurface storage offsets the loss of snow storage in various alpine geologic settings, i.e. the hydrogeologic buffering capacity, is still largely unknown. We address this research need by assessing the affects of climate change on storage and runoff generation for two distinct hydrogeologic settings present in alpine systems: a low storage granitic and a greater storage volcanic hillslope. We use a physically based integrated hydrologic model fully coupled to a land surface model to run a base scenario and then three progressive warming scenarios, and account for the shifts in each component of the water budget. For hillslopes with greater water retention, the larger storage volcanic hillslope buffered streamflow volumes and timing, but at the cost of greater reductions in groundwater storage relative to the low storage granite hillslope. We found that the results were highly sensitive to the unsaturated zone retention parameters, which in the case of alpine systems can be a mix of matrix or fracture flow. The presence of fractures and thus less retention in the unsaturated zone significantly decreased the reduction in recharge and runoff for the volcanic hillslope in climate warming scenarios. This approach highlights the importance of incorporating physically based subsurface flow in to alpine hydrology models, and our findings provide ways forward to arrive at a conceptual model that is both consistent with geology and hydrologic principles.

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“…However, none of these approaches can quantify the effects of the more complex (and poorly characterized) flow path heterogeneity that is typically encountered in real-world catchments [McDonnell et al, 2007]. Spatially explicit models can represent more of the heterogeneity that is present at the catchment scale [e.g., Kollet and Maxwell, 2008;Engdahl and Maxwell, 2015;Maxwell et al, 2016]. However, representing the spatial complexity that characterizes real-world landscapes, especially in the subsurface, requires model assumptions and parameterizations that cannot be validated [Berkowitz, 2002;Beven, 2006].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between contrasting ages of groundwater and streamflow

Berghuijs

Kirchner

2017

Geophysical Research Letters

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Tracer data demonstrate that waters in aquifers are often much older than the stream waters that drain them. This contrast in water ages has lacked a general quantitative explanation. Here we show that under stationary conditions, the age distribution of water stored in a catchment can be directly estimated from the age distribution of its outflows, and vice versa. This in turn implies that the storage selection function, expressing the catchment's preference for the release or retention of waters of different ages, can be estimated directly from the age distribution of outflow under stationary conditions. Using gamma distributions of streamflow ages, we show that the mean age of stored water can range from half as old as the mean age of streamflow (for plug flow conditions) to almost infinitely older (for strongly preferential flow). Many streamflow age distributions have long upper tails, consistent with preferential flow and implying that storage ages are substantially older than streamflow ages. Mean streamflow ages reported in the literature imply that most streamflow originates from a thin veneer of total groundwater storage. This preferential release of young streamflow implies that most groundwater is exchanged only slowly with the surface and consequently is relatively old.

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The imprint of climate and geology on the residence times of groundwater

Cited by 98 publications

References 56 publications

The Demographics of Water: A Review of Water Ages in the Critical Zone

The Demographics of Water: A Review of Water Ages in the Critical Zone

Hydrogeological response to climate change in alpine hillslopes

The relationship between contrasting ages of groundwater and streamflow

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