Impacts of Climate Change on Groundwater Availability and Spring Flows: Observations from the Highly Productive Medicine Lake Highlands/Fall River Springs Aquifer System

Mancewicz, Lauren; Davisson, L.; Wheelock, Shawn J.; Burns, Erick R.; Poulson, Simon R.; Tyler, S. W.

doi:10.1111/1752-1688.12976

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 52 publications

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“…The factors that produce instability in spring discharge are likely similar among springs across a variety of landscapes. Drought certainly can affect discharge of springs, perhaps most significantly for aquifers that are tightly coupled to surface processes, such as highly fractured karst and volcanic aquifers (Smith and Hunt, 2010;Mancewicz et al, 2021). Climate change, which could produce drought-like conditions in many regions, could reduce spring discharges in already arid areas that may need springs most, leading to calls for conservation planning (Cartwright et al, 2020).…”

Section: Spring Dischargementioning

confidence: 99%

The distribution, magnitude, and endemic species of US springs

Work

2023

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Freshwater springs and other groundwater-dependent ecosystems represent important natural resources in landscapes, providing consistent, high-quality water to both freshwater and terrestrial organisms. However, spring and GDE conservation does not appear to be a prominent feature on the US conservation radar. Therefore, this study evaluated the distribution and size of springs in the US with the national water dataset: the US Geological Survey National Water Information System. Using all available measurements of spring discharge and the sampling dates for all springs with data in the dataset (10,279 springs), I compared the number and sizes of springs between states and, where time series were available, determined whether the springs were maintaining historic discharges. I evaluated data quality using the date of the last sampling, number of times sampled, and the length of time sampled for each spring. Finally, I searched the literature for spring endemic species and recorded the states in which they occurred. Within the database, springs were most abundant in western states, but average discharges were largest for states in the southeast and for Idaho and Alaska. Very large springs occurred in some western states, but the multitudes of tiny springs reduced the average discharges. The data were poorly resolved as many of the springs had been sampled only once, often 40–50 years ago. Time series were available only for 126 springs and half of these springs exhibited declines in discharge. Endemic species were mentioned in the literature for 24 states, particularly those in the lower half of the country, and so loss of spring integrity would threaten biodiversity in many states. Due to the poor resolution of the data, broad conclusions about the integrity of these important freshwater systems are difficult to impossible to make for most states using the national dataset. Therefore, I call for a concerted national effort to more broadly evaluate spring and GDE resources. Springs and GDEs are likely to become even more important in the future as climate changes and their roles as freshwater refuges, temperature buffers, and bellwethers become even more important.

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Section: Spring Dischargementioning

confidence: 99%

The distribution, magnitude, and endemic species of US springs

Work

2023

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Simulation of Heat Flow in a Synthetic Watershed: Lags and Dampening across Multiple Pathways under a Climate-Forcing Scenario

Feinstein

Hunt

Morway

2022

Water

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Although there is widespread agreement that future climates tend toward warming, the response of aquatic ecosystems to that warming is not well understood. This work, a continuation of companion research, explores the role of distinct watershed pathways in lagging and dampening climate-change signals. It subjects a synthetic flow and transport model to a 30-year warming signal based on climate projections, quantifying the heat breakthrough on a monthly time step along connected pathways. The system corresponds to a temperate watershed roughly 27 km on a side and consists of (a) land-surface processes of overland flow, (b) infiltration through an unsaturated zone (UZ) above an unconfined sandy aquifer overlying impermeable bedrock, and (c) groundwater flow along shallow and deep pathlines that converge as discharge to a surface-water network. Numerical simulations show that about 40% of the warming applied to watershed infiltration arrives at the water table and that the UZ stores a large fraction of the upward-trending heat signal. Additionally, once groundwater reaches the surface-water network after traveling through the saturated zone, only about 10% of the original warm-up signal is returned to streams by discharge. However, increases in the simulated streamflow temperatures are of similar magnitude to increases at the water table, due to the addition of heat by storm runoff, which bypasses UZ and groundwater storage and counteracts subsurface dampening. The synthetic modeling method and tentative findings reported here provide a potential workflow for real-world applications of climate-change modeling at the full watershed scale.

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Impacts of Climate Change on Groundwater Availability and Spring Flows: Observations from the Highly Productive Medicine Lake Highlands/Fall River Springs Aquifer System

Cited by 2 publications

References 52 publications

The distribution, magnitude, and endemic species of US springs

The distribution, magnitude, and endemic species of US springs

Simulation of Heat Flow in a Synthetic Watershed: Lags and Dampening across Multiple Pathways under a Climate-Forcing Scenario

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