The effect of streambed heterogeneity on groundwater-surface water exchange fluxes inferred from temperature time series

Irvine, Dylan J.; Cranswick, Roger H.; Simmons, Craig T.; Shanafield, Margaret; Lautz, Laura K.

doi:10.1002/2014wr015769

Cited by 61 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(110 reference statements)

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“…The velocity fields of some natural conditions tended to be nonuniform. Analysis of non-vertical flow through heat tracing has been well documented by Lautz (2010), Cuthbert and Mackay (2013), and Irvine et al (2015); however, credible patterns of hyporheic exchange can be generated via these analytical solution even at the scale of a river bank or cross section.…”

Section: Analysis Methods Of Vertical Hyporheic Fluxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heat tracing to determine spatial patterns of hyporheic exchange across a river transect

Chen

Zhang

et al. 2017

Hydrogeol J

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Significant spatial variability of water fluxes may exist at the water-sediment interface in river channels and has great influence on a variety of water issues. Understanding the complicated flow systems controlling the flux exchanges along an entire river is often limited due to averaging of parameters or the small number of discrete point measurements usually used. This study investigated the spatial pattern of the hyporheic flux exchange across a river transect in China, using the heat tracing approach. This was done with measurements of temperature at high spatial resolution during a 64-h monitoring period and using the data to identify the spatial pattern of the hyporheic exchange flux with the aid of a one-dimensional conduction-advection-dispersion model (VFLUX). The threshold of neutral exchange was considered as 126 L m −2 d −1 in this study and the heat tracing results showed that the change patterns of vertical hyporheic flux varied with buried depth along the river transect; however, the hyporheic flux was not simply controlled by the streambed hydraulic conductivity and water depth in the river transect. Also, lateral flow dominated the hyporheic process within the shallow high-permeability streambed, while the vertical flow was dominant in the deep low-permeability streambed. The spatial pattern of hyporheic exchange across the river transect was naturally controlled by the heterogeneity of the streambed and the bedform of the stream cross-section. Consequently, a two-dimensional conceptual illustration of the hyporheic process across the river transect is proposed, which could be applicable to river transects of similar conditions.

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Section: Analysis Methods Of Vertical Hyporheic Fluxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heat tracing to determine spatial patterns of hyporheic exchange across a river transect

Chen

Zhang

et al. 2017

Hydrogeol J

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“…However, the influence of the use of a wider range of K (i.e., harddata in the range of 10 −6 to 10 −1 cm/s) on the RT is also examined as a sensitivity analysis. Following a previous example (Irvine et al ), a simple kriging process and spherical model are selected and the variance of ln( K ) is defined as 0.74. The correlation length in the horizontal direction is 2.0 m. The mean K value of each realization in the HeI case is applied to each of the 20 simulations of the HoI case.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Zhou et al () concluded that the flux of a heterogeneous streambed was one order of magnitude higher than that of a homogeneous streambed. Other researchers (Irvine and Lautz ; Irvine et al ) have also discussed the influence of heterogeneity on the HZ fluxes based on temperature time‐series records. Beyond the effect of heterogeneity, Zlotnik et al () considered the influence of large‐ and small‐scale anisotropy on the HZ fluxes at various depths.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of Streambed Heterogeneity and Anisotropy on Residence Time of Hyporheic Zone

Liu

Chui

2017

Groundwater

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The hyporheic zone (HZ), which is the region beneath or alongside a streambed, plays an important role in the stream's ecology. The duration that a water molecule or a solute remains within the HZ, or residence time (RT), is one of the most common metrics used to evaluate the function of the HZ. The RT is greatly influenced by the streambed's hydraulic conductivity (K), which is intrinsically difficult to characterize due to its heterogeneity and anisotropy. Many laboratory and numerical studies of the HZ have simplified the streambed K to a constant, thus producing RT values that may differ from those gathered from the field. Some studies have considered the heterogeneity of the HZ, but very few have accounted for anisotropy or the natural K distributions typically found in real streambeds. This study developed numerical models in MODFLOW to examine the influence of heterogeneity and anisotropy, and that of the natural K distribution in a streambed, on the RT of the HZ. Heterogeneity and anisotropy were both found to shorten the mean and median RTs while increasing the range of the RTs. Moreover, heterogeneous K fields arranged in a more orderly pattern had longer RTs than those with random K distributions. These results could facilitate the design of streambed K values and distributions to achieve the desired RT during river restoration. They could also assist the translation of results from the more commonly considered homogeneous and/or isotropic conditions into heterogeneous and anisotropic field situations.

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“…After solving for fluid flow in COMSOL, transient heat flow was simulated in the model volume in a manner that is consistent with assumptions of previous work [e.g., Irvine et al ., , Cuthbert and Mackay , ] utilizing the advection‐diffusion equation in three dimensions:

\frac{δ normalT}{δ normalt} = κ_{e} \nabla^{2} normalT - q \frac{ρ_{w} c_{w}}{false(ρ {c)}_{b}} \nabla normalT

…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of three‐dimensional nonuniform flow on quantification of groundwater‐surface water interactions using heat as a tracer

Reeves

Hatch

2016

Water Resources Research

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Use of heat‐as‐a‐tracer is a common method to quantify surface water‐groundwater interactions (SW‐GW). However, the method relies on assumptions likely violated in natural systems. Numerical studies have explored violation of fundamental assumptions such as heterogeneous streambed properties, two‐dimensional groundwater flow fields and uncertainty in thermal parameters for the 1‐D heat‐as‐a‐tracer method. Few studies to date have modeled complex, fully three‐dimensional groundwater flows to address the impacts of nonuniform, 3‐D flow vectors on use of heat‐as‐a‐tracer to quantify SW‐GW interactions. COMSOL Multiphysics was used to model scenarios in a fully three‐dimensional flow field in homogeneous, isotropic sand with a sinusoidal temperature upper boundary where vertical flows are deliberately disrupted by large and varied horizontal flows from two directions. Resulting temperature time series from multiple depths were used to estimate vertical Darcy flux and compared with modeled fluxes to assess the performance of the 1‐D thermal methods to quantify multidimensional groundwater flows. In addition, apparent effective thermal diffusivity was calculated from synthetic temperature time series and compared to model input diffusivity. Both increasingly nonuniform and nonvertical groundwater flow fields resulted in increasing errors for both the temperature‐derived flux and temperature‐derived effective thermal diffusivity. For losing (downward) flow geometries, errors in temperature‐derived effective thermal diffusivity were highly correlated with errors in temperature‐derived flux and were used to identify how and when underlying assumptions necessary to use heat‐as‐a‐tracer for quantifying groundwater flows were violated. Specifically, nonuniform flow fields (with flow lines that converge or diverge) produced the largest errors in simulated fluxes.

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The effect of streambed heterogeneity on groundwater-surface water exchange fluxes inferred from temperature time series

Cited by 61 publications

References 44 publications

Heat tracing to determine spatial patterns of hyporheic exchange across a river transect

Heat tracing to determine spatial patterns of hyporheic exchange across a river transect

Impacts of Streambed Heterogeneity and Anisotropy on Residence Time of Hyporheic Zone

Impacts of three‐dimensional nonuniform flow on quantification of groundwater‐surface water interactions using heat as a tracer

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