[1] Hydraulic fracturing, used to economically produce natural gas from shale formations, has raised environmental concerns. The objective of this study is to assess one of the largely unexamined issues, which is the potential for slow contamination of shallow groundwater due to hydraulic fracturing at depth via fluid migration along conductive faults. We compiled publically available data of shale gas basins and hydraulic fracturing operations to develop a two-dimensional, single-phase, multispecies, density-dependent, finite-element numerical groundwater flow and mass transport model. The model simulates hydraulic fracturing in the vicinity of a permeable fault zone in a generic, low-recharge, regional sedimentary basin in which shallow, active groundwater flow occurs above nearly stagnant brine. A sensitivity analysis of contaminant migration along the fault considered basin, fault and hydraulic fracturing parameters. Results show that specific conditions are needed for the slow contamination of a shallow aquifer: a high permeability fault, high overpressure in the shale unit, and hydrofracturing in the upper portion of the shale near the fault. Under such conditions, contaminants from the shale unit reach the shallow aquifer in less than 1000 years following hydraulic fracturing, at concentrations of solutes up to 90% of their initial concentration in the shale, indicating that the impact on groundwater quality could be significant. Important implications of this result are that hydraulic fracturing should not be carried out near potentially conductive faults, and that impacts should be monitored for long timespans. Further work is needed to assess the impact of multiphase flow on contaminant transport along natural preferential pathways.

[1] The age of groundwater, the time since the water recharged the subsurface, is a fundamental characteristic of groundwater that impacts diverse geologic processes and practical applications. The distribution of groundwater age depends on many factors including permeability, recharge rate, aquifer geometry, and topography. Seminal work simulated topography-driven regional groundwater flow with various topographies, localized high-permeability zones, and more recently with permeability decreasing with depth, but the role of layered aquifer systems which are common in both consolidated and unconsolidated sediments has not been systematically explored. Here we show that high age zones with predictable locations occur in layered geologic systems across a wide range of hydraulic gradients, basin geometries, and permeabilities. Numerical simulations of a generic three-layer aquifer system indicate that high age zones consistently form in the low-permeability layer near the middle of the basin. The zones of older groundwater result from low groundwater velocities in the low-permeability layer and the rejuvenation of the groundwater through mixing of different flow paths near discharge zones. The high age zones are not hydraulic stagnation points but are associated with areas of low velocity. Formation and location of zones of high groundwater ages in low-permeability units are important as these units are targeted for radioactive waste disposal and shale gas extraction. High age zones are also likely to affect geologic processes that depend on groundwater or solute fluxes and may serve as archives of past hydrological or climatological conditions. Citation: Gassiat, C., T. Gleeson, and E. Luijendijk (2013), The location of old groundwater in hydrogeologic basins and layered aquifer systems, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40,[3042][3043][3044][3045][3046][3047]

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