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

地下水是水文循环的重要组成部分。雨水、积雪融化和冰川融化的水在排放到河流、湖泊和湿地等地表水系统之前，暂时储存在地下含水层中。在世界许多地区，地下水被广泛用于市政、工业和农业供水。在地表水供应有限的加拿大西部半干旱地区，对地下水的依赖预计将加剧。除了向人类供水外，地下水的储存和延迟释放还为河流提供了基流，并为降水投入的短期和长期变化提供了缓冲。尽管地下水很重要，但对寒冷环境中地下水过程的科学理解远远落后于温暖地区的地下水过程。这项研究计划的总体目标是促进我们对寒冷环境中地下水的了解，这些环境受到雪、冻土、冰川和永久冻土的强烈影响。该研究计划由三个项目组成，每个项目都解决了现有科学知识中的一个主要缺口：1)高山地区的地下水，2)通过冻土渗透的地下水补给，以及3)地下水与永久冻土的相互作用。所有这三个项目都非常重视对地下水过程的实地观察，并开发数学和数值模型，将小范围的过程与流域的大范围行为联系起来。这项研究中开发的对地下水过程和数值工具的更好的理解与寒冷地区的可持续水资源管理高度相关。例如，阿尔卑斯山地下水研究将为一年中9至10个月的基流期间的供水规划提供关键信息。项目2中开发的地下水补给模型将被艾伯塔省政府用于制定水资源政策和分配地下水开采许可证。了解非连续多年冻土盆地未来的河流流量，对于估计西北地区、艾伯塔省北部和不列颠哥伦比亚省不连续永久冻土区未来石油和天然气资源开发的水资源可用性至关重要。

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.