Get rights and content Highlights • Approach developed to identify abiotic and biotic influences to riverbed clogging. • Riverbed clogging dominated by biological processes at a riverbank filtration site. • Riverbed clogging influenced by seasonal effects and downstream dam operations. • Benefits/limitations of seepage and thermal measurements, ERT, and cryocores.

[1] The presence of an unsaturated region beneath a streambed during groundwater pumping near streams can reduce the pumping capacity, change flow paths, and alter the types of biological transformations in the streambed sediments. A three-dimensional, multiphase flow model of two horizontal collector wells along the Russian River near Forestville, California, was developed to investigate the impact of varying the ratio of the aquifer to streambed permeability on (1) the formation of an unsaturated region beneath the stream, (2) the pumping capacity, (3) stream water fluxes through the streambed, and (4) stream water traveltimes to the collector wells. The aquifer to streambed permeability ratio at which the unsaturated region was initially observed ranged from 10 to 100. The size of the unsaturated region beneath the streambed increased as the aquifer to streambed permeability ratio increased. The simulations also indicated that for a particular aquifer permeability, decreasing the streambed permeability by only a factor of 2-3 from the permeability where desaturation initially occurred resulted in reducing the pumping capacity. In some cases, the stream water fluxes increased as the streambed permeability decreased. However, the stream water residence times increased and the fraction of stream water that reached that the wells decreased as the streambed permeability decreased, indicating that a higher streambed flux does not necessarily correlate to greater recharge of stream water around the wells.

Carboxylated microspheres were employed as surrogates to assess the transport potential of Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts during forced-and natural-gradient tests conducted in July and October 2004. The tests involved poorly-sorted, near-surface sediments where groundwater is pumped from an alluvial aquifer underlying the Russian River, Sonoma County, CA. In an off channel infiltration basin and within the river, a mixture (2-, 3-, and 5-μm diameters) of fluorescently-labeled carboxylated microspheres and bromide tracers were used in two injection and recovery test to assess sediment removal efficiency for the microspheres. Bottom sediments varied considerably in their filtration efficiency for Cryptosporidium.

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