Cold frontier in hydrogeology: Interaction of groundwater with alpine streams, frozen soil, and permafrost

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Groundwater is an essential component of the hydrologic cycle. Rain, snowmelt, and glacier melt water are temporarily stored in underground aquifers before they discharge to surface water systems such as rivers, lakes, and wetlands. Groundwater is used extensively for municipal, industrial, and agricultural water supplies in many parts of the world. The reliance of groundwater is expected to intensify in the semi-arid regions of western Canada, where surface water supply is limited. In addition to supplying water to human use, the storage and delayed release of groundwater provides baseflow in streams and serves as a buffer for short- and long-term variability in precipitation inputs. Despite the importance of groundwater, scientific understanding of groundwater processes in cold environments is far less advanced than those in warmer regions. The overall goal of this research program is to advance our understanding of groundwater in cold environments that are strongly influenced by snow, frozen soil, glacier, and permafrost. The research program consists of three projects, each addressing a major gap in existing scientific knowledge; 1) groundwater in alpine regions, 2) groundwater recharge involving infiltration through frozen soil, and 3) interaction of groundwater with permafrost. All three projects have a strong emphasis on the field observation of groundwater processes and the development of mathematical and numerical models that link small-scale processes with large-scale behavior of watersheds. Improved understanding of groundwater processes and numerical tools developed in this study are highly relevant to sustainable water resource management in cold regions. For example, the alpine groundwater study will provide the key information for water supply planning during baseflow periods, which covers 9 to 10 months of the year. Groundwater recharge model developed in Project 2 will be used by the Government of Alberta for water policy development and groundwater extraction license allocation. Understanding of future river flow in discontinuous permafrost basins will be critical for estimating the water availability for future development of oil and gas resources in the discontinuous permafrost regions of the Northwest Territories and northern Alberta and British Columbia.