Groundwater flow age distributions: Understanding open pit mine hydrology

地下水流年龄分布：了解露天矿水文学

• 批准号: LP150100395
• 负责人: Prof Craig Simmons
• 金额: $ 23.09万
• 依托单位: Flinders University
• 依托单位国家: 澳大利亚
• 项目类别: Linkage Projects
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 澳大利亚
• 起止时间: 2015-10-08 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/RGS/Web/Grants/LP150100395
• 关键词: Groundwater; flow; age; distributions; Understanding

This project aims to improve the estimation of the age of groundwater. Understanding groundwater age is critical for sustainable management and environmental tracers are increasingly used for this purpose. However, groundwater samples are inevitably mixtures of water of different ages. Since for most tracers the relationship between tracer concentration and age is not linear, different tracers can produce different mean ages for the sample. This project aims to determine whether it is possible to determine moments of the groundwater age distributions from measurements made with different environmental tracers. The project also aims to examine whether the degree of heterogeneity within the aquifer can be determined from the disparity between ages obtained with different tracers. This project aims to tackle the largest problem with using groundwater chemistry to estimate water age – that mixing processes in the subsurface are never known. Solving this problem will allow much more accurate estimates of groundwater velocity and aquifer recharge rates. The groundwater industry contributes an estimated $6.8 billion per annum to the Australian economy, and this project will contribute to the sustainable management of the groundwater resource.

该项目旨在改进对地下水年龄的估计。了解地下水年龄对于可持续管理至关重要，为此越来越多地使用环境示踪剂。然而，地下水样本不可避免地是不同年龄的水的混合物。由于对于大多数示踪剂来说，示踪剂浓度与年龄之间的关系不是线性的，不同的示踪剂可以为样品产生不同的平均年龄。该项目旨在确定是否有可能根据不同环境示踪剂的测量结果确定地下水年龄分布的矩。该项目还旨在审查是否可以根据不同示踪剂获得的年龄之间的差异来确定含水层内的非均质程度。该项目旨在解决利用地下水化学来估计水龄的最大问题--地下水中的混合过程永远不为人所知。解决这一问题将使地下水流速和含水层补给率的估算更加准确。据估计，地下水产业每年为澳大利亚经济贡献68亿美元，该项目将有助于地下水资源的可持续管理。