CMBEAR: Python-Based Recharge Estimator Using the Chloride Mass Balance Method in Australia.

The chloride mass balance (CMB) method is widely used to estimate long-term rates of groundwater recharge. In regions where surface water runoff is negligible, recharge can be estimated using measurements of chloride concentrations of groundwater and precipitation, and an estimate of long-term average rainfall. This paper presents the Chloride Mass Balance Estimator of Australian Recharge (CMBEAR), a Jupyter (Python) Notebook that is set up to rapidly apply the CMB method using gridded maps of chloride deposition rates across the Australian continent.

Inferring watershed hydraulics and cold-water habitat persistence using multi-year air and stream temperature signals.

Streams strongly influenced by groundwater discharge may serve as "climate refugia" for sensitive species in regions of increasingly marginal thermal conditions. The main goal of this study is to develop paired air and stream water annual temperature signal analysis techniques to elucidate the relative groundwater contribution to stream water and the effective groundwater flowpath depth. Groundwater discharge to streams attenuates surface water temperature signals, and this attenuation can be diagnostic of groundwater gaining systems.

Heat as a groundwater tracer in shallow and deep heterogeneous media: Analytical solution, spreadsheet tool, and field applications.

Groundwater flow advects heat, and thus, the deviation of subsurface temperatures from an expected conduction-dominated regime can be analysed to estimate vertical water fluxes. A number of analytical approaches have been proposed for using heat as a groundwater tracer, and these have typically assumed a homogeneous medium. However, heterogeneous thermal properties are ubiquitous in subsurface environments, both at the scale of geologic strata and at finer scales in streambeds.

Using Diurnal Temperature Signals to Infer Vertical Groundwater-Surface Water Exchange.

Heat is a powerful tracer to quantify fluid exchange between surface water and groundwater. Temperature time series can be used to estimate pore water fluid flux, and techniques can be employed to extend these estimates to produce detailed plan-view flux maps. Key advantages of heat tracing include cost-effective sensors and ease of data collection and interpretation, without the need for expensive and time-consuming laboratory analyses or induced tracers.

Groundwater flow estimation using temperature-depth profiles in a complex environment and a changing climate.

Obtaining reliable estimates of vertical groundwater flows remains a challenge but is of critical importance to the management of groundwater resources. When large scale land clearing or groundwater extraction occurs, methods based on water table fluctuations or water chemistry are unreliable. As an alternative, a number of methods based on temperature-depth (T-z) profiles are available to provide vertical groundwater flow estimates from which recharge rates may be calculated.

Heat and solute tracers: how do they compare in heterogeneous aquifers?

A comparison of groundwater velocity in heterogeneous aquifers estimated from hydraulic methods, heat and solute tracers was made using numerical simulations. Aquifer heterogeneity was described by geostatistical properties of the Borden, Cape Cod, North Bay, and MADE aquifers. Both heat and solute tracers displayed little systematic under- or over-estimation in velocity relative to a hydraulic control.

When can inverted water tables occur beneath streams?

Decline in regional water tables (RWT) can cause losing streams to disconnect from underlying aquifers. When this occurs, an inverted water table (IWT) will develop beneath the stream, and an unsaturated zone will be present between the IWT and the RWT. The IWT marks the base of the saturated zone beneath the stream.