Influences on shallow ground temperatures in high flux thermal systems

Abstract

Ground temperature measurements are a useful indication of subsurface processes and heat flux, particularly in volcanic and hydrothermal systems, but obtaining reliable data at sufficient resolution can be difficult. Investigators commonly use temperature measurements at 1 meter depths to minimize land surface boundary impacts; however, these measurements are time-consuming and invasive, limiting the number of points that can be surveyed. Alternatively, shallow ground temperature measurements (≤25 cm depth) offer a rapid and minimally-invasive way to collect a large number of observations in a target area. Although this method has obvious appeal, changing atmospheric conditions can impact the observed temperatures, and thus may reasonably be expected to influence interpretations arising from the data. Here we examine the impact of precipitation and changing air temperature on shallow ground temperatures in the vicinity of a group of hot springs located in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. We find that the mean, the range, and the skewness of the observed temperatures were decreased by changing atmospheric conditions; however, the model variogram representing data taken after several days of moderate precipitation adequately described the spatial correlation of data taken before precipitation. We therefore conclude that the ability to differentiate between high-and low-flux areas may be somewhat reduced by moderate precipitation and changing atmospheric conditions, but that interpretations made on the basis of characteristics of the inferred variograms are likely to be robust to such perturbations in high heat flux environments.

Advance hydrological studies utilizing open access internet databases

“…The open data access initiatives taken by the U.S. governmental agencies make the government‐owned mega databases readily available to the public, presenting scientists with unprecedented research opportunities. Numerous environmental studies have been reported utilizing the three databases described in this paper, the NCEI of the NOAA (Herkert, Martinez, & Hornbuckle, ; Lubenow, Fairley, Lindsey, & Larson, ; Rayne & Forest, ; Stow, Cha, Johnson, Confesor, & Richards, ; Zhang, Wang, Hamilton & Lauer, ), the NWIS of the USGS (Bartrons, Papeş, & Diebel, ; Conyers & Fonstad, ; David & Haggard, ; Saat, Werth, Schaeffer, Yoon, & Barkan, ; Tesoriero, Terziotti, & Abrams, ), and the GeoTracker of the SWRCB of California (Adamson, Anderson, Mahendra & Newell, ; McHugh, Kulkarni, Newell, Connor, & Garg, ; Pineda & Liu, ). We anticipate that, with an increased level of awareness of the existence of these open access databases, many more environmental and hydrological studies will be reported utilizing these publically accessible data sources in the future.…”

Direct measurement of advective heat flux from several Yellowstone hot springs, Wyoming, USA

“…This estimate is an order of magnitude greater than that presented here, and three times the Kilauea eruption rate. Lubenow et al (2016) estimated near-field conductive heat losses around Bee (LCBNN159) on the basis of 20-cm-deep temperature measurements in a grid at a 3 × 3 m spacing around the spring vent. Their results suggest that in some cases, conduction may account for as much as 50 percent of the total heat transfer to the atmosphere across the land surface boundary, where the remaining flux of heat, calculated here, is included in the advective spring flow.…”

“…The sample dD values were later measured in the laboratory to provide time-decay curves, from which fluid recharge rates were estimated for the springs. The spring discharge estimates reported here were undertaken in conjunction with a program of high-resolution shallow ground temperature measurement (Lubenow et al, 2016) as part of wider study to examine conductive/advective heat partitioning in the near-fields of individual hydrothermal springs.…”

A Distributed Temperature Profiling System for Vertically and Laterally Dense Acquisition of Soil and Snow Temperature

“…Early work was done by Cartwright (1968), who, using a thermistor at the end of an aluminum-tipped stake, found close agreement between locations of thermal anomalies and the shallow aquifers that partly drove these anomalies. Furthermore, several successful studies have been performed in volcanic and hydrothermal areas to delineate thermal anomalies and in some cases calculate ground fluxes (e.g., Hurwitz et al, 2012;Lubenow et al, 2016;Saba et al, 2007). In a discontinuous permafrost environment, Léger et al (2019) moved custom designed vertically resolved temperature probes sequentially across the landscape to identify near-surface permafrost distribution.…”

“…This is due to the high initial investment required and the risk of losing a large amount of data in the case of instrument, cable, or power failure (Lundquist and Lott, 2008). Finally, it can be noted that the absence of systems to efficiently map soil thermal regimes at hundreds of locations has been recognized by several studies that have either relied on conventional thermocouple probes (≤25 cm) (e.g., Leon et al, 2014;Lubenow et al, 2016;Price et al, 2017) or developed their own acquisition devices that are costly to duplicate (Hurwitz et al, 2012;Léger et al, 2019).…”