Journal
HYDROGEOLOGY JOURNAL
Volume 27, Issue 1, Pages 409-421Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10040-018-1842-y
Keywords
Discharge area; Sample representativeness; Groundwater age; Groundwater hydraulics; Intraborehole flow
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41522205]
- National Program for Support of Top-notch Young Professionals
- Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation [201457]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Groundwater sampled at the outlets of uncased flowing wells in athick unconfined aquifer, which has undergone mixing, has been found to have hydrochemistry similar to deep groundwater in discharge areas. To identify the hydrodynamic causes, transient models of groundwater flow and age in a three-dimensional homogeneous unit basin with flowing wells are constructed to obtain flow rates in wells and groundwater mean age around wells. Inflow of groundwater to the well in the deep part leads to mixing of groundwater from different sources, and the finally mixed groundwater is found to have the same age as groundwater in the aquifer at a specific depth, termed the equivalent position (EP). EP is always found in the lower half of the flowing well, indicating that a mixed sample at the outlet could represent deep groundwater. Outflow from the well to the unconfined aquifer in the shallow part results in aging of groundwater around the well. For fully penetrating flowing wells in confined aquifers, EP is found in the upper half of the aquifer. The different relative depths of EP to the screen interval in the two types of flowing wells are mainly due to the profiles of horizontal velocity in the inflow segment, which is basically uniform in a confined aquifer but increases from zero to a maximum value in unconfined aquifers. Thus, groundwater at the outlets of topography-controlled flowing wells is a window of the deep part of a basin, and existing long-screen wells couldhave the potential for groundwater sampling.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available