On the Use of StorAge Selection Functions to Assess Time‐Variant Travel Times in Lakes

Smith, Aaron; Tetzlaff, Doerthe; Soulsby, Chris

doi:10.1029/2017wr021242

Cited by 15 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…For conceptualizations of a hydrological system as a single (or several discrete) reservoir(s), the age master equation has been solved by specifying a "StorAge Selection (SAS) function" of all outflows, which can be used to represent different mixing assumptions inside the hydrologic compartment (Bolin & Rodhe, 1973;Rinaldo et al, 2015; Figure 3b). This approach can be applied to whole catchments (Benettin, Soulsby, et al, 2017;Harman, 2015;van der Velde et al, 2012), individual compartments (Benettin, Kirchner, et al, 2015;Rodriguez et al, 2018), and lakes (Smith et al, 2018). SAS functions are usually determined by assuming a functional form (e.g., a beta or gamma distribution) and calibrating the relevant parameters against observed tracer data, like stable isotopes (e.g., Benettin, Soulsby, et al, 2017) chloride (e.g., Benettin, Kirchner, et al, 2015), and recently also cosmogenic radioactive isotopes (Visser et al, 2019).…”

Section: 1029/2018rg000633mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Demographics of Water: A Review of Water Ages in the Critical Zone

Sprenger

Stumpp

Weiler

et al. 2019

Reviews of Geophysics

246

214

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The time that water takes to travel through the terrestrial hydrological cycle and the critical zone is of great interest in Earth system sciences with broad implications for water quality and quantity. Most water age studies to date have focused on individual compartments (or subdisciplines) of the hydrological cycle such as the unsaturated or saturated zone, vegetation, atmosphere, or rivers. However, recent studies have shown that processes at the interfaces between the hydrological compartments (e.g., soil‐atmosphere or soil‐groundwater) govern the age distribution of the water fluxes between these compartments and thus can greatly affect water travel times. The broad variation from complete to nearly absent mixing of water at these interfaces affects the water ages in the compartments. This is especially the case for the highly heterogeneous critical zone between the top of the vegetation and the bottom of the groundwater storage. Here, we review a wide variety of studies about water ages in the critical zone and provide (1) an overview of new prospects and challenges in the use of hydrological tracers to study water ages, (2) a discussion of the limiting assumptions linked to our lack of process understanding and methodological transfer of water age estimations to individual disciplines or compartments, and (3) a vision for how to improve future interdisciplinary efforts to better understand the feedbacks between the atmosphere, vegetation, soil, groundwater, and surface water that control water ages in the critical zone.

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Section: 1029/2018rg000633mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Demographics of Water: A Review of Water Ages in the Critical Zone

Sprenger

Stumpp

Weiler

et al. 2019

Reviews of Geophysics

246

214

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The functional form of older components may be chosen among popular functions, such as the power function (Benettin, Soulsby, et al, 2017; Queloz, Carraro, et al, 2015) or the beta distribution (Danesh‐Yazdi, Botter, & Foufoula‐Georgiou, 2017; Kaandorp et al, 2018; van der Velde et al, 2015; Yang et al, 2018) to use P S as a variable. The uniform distribution or the gamma distribution (Harman, 2015; Rodriguez & Klaus, 2019; Smith, Tetzlaff, & Soulsby, 2018) may be chosen to use S T instead, which may reduce the uncertainties related to the usually unknown total storage.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multimodal water age distributions and the challenge of complex hydrological landscapes

Rodriguez

Benettin

Klaus

2020

Hydrological Processes

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Travel time distributions (TTDs) are concise descriptions of transport processes in catchments based on water ages, and they are particularly efficient as lumped hydrological models to simulate tracers in outflows. Past studies have approximated catchment TTDs with unimodal probability distribution functions (pdf) and have successfully simulated tracers in outflows with those. However, intricate flow paths and contrasting water velocities observed in complex hydrological systems may generate multimodal age distributions. This study explores the occurrence of multimodal age distributions in hydrological systems and investigates the consequences of multimodality for tracer transport.Lumped models based on TTDs of varying complexity (unimodal and multimodal) are used to simulate tracers in the discharge of hydrological systems under well-known conditions. Specifically, we simulate tracer data from a controlled lysimeter irrigation experiment showing a multimodal response and we provide results from a virtual catchment-scale experiment testing the ability of a unimodal age distribution to simulate a known and more complex multimodal age system. Models are based on composite StorAge Selection functions, defined as weighted sums of pdfs, which allow a straightforward implementation of uni-or multi-modal age distributions while accounting for unsteady conditions. These two experiments show that simple unimodal models provide satisfactory simulations of a given tracer, but they fail in reproducing processes occurring at different temporal scales. Multimodal distributions, instead, can better capture the detailed dynamics embedded in the observations. We conclude that experimental knowledge of flow paths and the systematic use of data from multiple, independent tracers can be used to validate the assumption of water age unimodality. Multimodal age distributions are more likely to emerge in landscapes where the distributions of flow path lengths and/or water velocities are themselves multimodal. In general, age multimodality may not be particularly pronounced and detectable, unless comparable amounts of water with contrasting ages reach a given outflow. K E Y W O R D Shydrological tracer, lumped model, multimodal distribution, StorAge Selection function, travel time, water age distribution, water chemistry, water velocity

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“…Henderson and Shuman (2010) proposed limits of geographical parameters to explain lake water isotopic values due to complicated local-scale controls, which can vary greatly even between lakes in the same climatic region. Differences between lakes can be explained by variable ratios of surface area to volume and by different mixing patterns of the lakes affecting the isotopic composition of the lake water (Mayr et al, 2007;Smith, Tetzlaff, & Soulsby, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dual effects of precipitation and evaporation on lake water stable isotope composition in the monsoon region

Mingquan

Yao

Luo

et al. 2019

Hydrological Processes

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We present the results of a 3‐year monitoring programme of the stable isotope composition of lake water and precipitation at Taozi Lake, in the East Asian monsoon region of China. Our aims were to reveal the spatiotemporal pattern of variation of stable isotopes in a small closed‐basin lake and to quantitatively determine the impacts of precipitation and evaporation on the stable isotope composition of lake water under a humid monsoon climate. In the time domain, the stable oxygen isotopic ratio of the lake water (δ18OL) exhibited substantial seasonal and interannual variations, but the isotope variations between different precipitation events substantially exceeded seasonal and interannual variations. Compared with the stable isotopes in precipitation, δ18OL was substantially positive and dL was negative. In the space domains, the lake water was homogeneously mixed. Indicated by statistic analyses, precipitation plays a dominant role in dynamic of the lake stable isotope during precipitation events of relatively large magnitude, whereas the effect of evaporation is dominant during smaller precipitation events. Results advance our understanding of the stable isotope change rule in the process of lake water evaporation, and it is helpful to identify the climatic significance recorded in stable isotopic compositions of lake bottom sediments.

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On the Use of StorAge Selection Functions to Assess Time‐Variant Travel Times in Lakes

Cited by 15 publications

References 91 publications

The Demographics of Water: A Review of Water Ages in the Critical Zone

The Demographics of Water: A Review of Water Ages in the Critical Zone

Multimodal water age distributions and the challenge of complex hydrological landscapes

Dual effects of precipitation and evaporation on lake water stable isotope composition in the monsoon region

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