Single Well Tracer Tests in Aquifer Characterization

When the purpose of aquifer testing is to yield data for modeling aqueous mass transport, pumping tests and gradient measurement can only partially satisfy characterization requirements. Effective porosity, ground water flow velocity, and the vertical distribution of hydraulic conductivity within the aquifer are left as unknowns. Single well tracer methods, when added to the testing program, can be used to estimate these parameters. A drift, and pumpback test yields porosity and velocity, and point-dilution testing yields depth-discrete hydraulic information, A single emplacement of tracer into a test well is sufficient to conduct both tests. The tracer tests are facilitated by a simple method for injecting and evenly distributing the tracer solution into a wellbore, and by new ion-selective electrode instrumentation, specifically designed for submersible service, for monitoring the concentration of tracers such as bromide.     

Collected Rain Water as Cost-Efficient Source for Aquifer Tracer Testing

Locally collected precipitation water can be actively used as a groundwater tracer solution based on four inherent tracer signals: electrical conductivity, stable isotopic signatures of deuterium [δ²H], oxygen-18 [δ¹⁸O], and heat, which all may strongly differ from the corresponding background values in the tested groundwater. In hydrogeological practice, a tracer test is one of the most important methods for determining subsurface connections or field parameters, such as porosity, dispersivity, diffusion coefficient, groundwater flow velocity, or flow direction. A common problem is the choice of tracer and the corresponding permission by the appropriate authorities. This problem intensifies where tracer tests are conducted in vulnerable conservation or water protection areas (e.g., around drinking water wells). The use of (if required treated) precipitation as an elemental groundwater tracer is a practical solution for this problem, as it does not introduce foreign matters into the aquifer system, which may contribute positively to the permission delivery. Before tracer application, the natural variations of the participating end members' tracer signals have to be evaluated locally. To obtain a sufficient volume of tracer solution, precipitation can be collected as rain using a detached, large-scale rain collector, which will be independent from possibly existing surfaces like roofs or drained areas. The collected precipitation is then stored prior to a tracer experiment.     

Comparison of Hydraulic Conductivity Values Obtained from Aquifer Pumping Tests and Conservative Tracer Tests

Afield site was established in an area of glacial outwash near Des Moines, Iowa. Hydraulic conductivity (K) of the outwash was measured in various ways including six pumping tests and two natural-gradient Cl^- tracer tests. The velocity of the conservative tracer was converted to K using measured gradients and effective porosity determined from two radial-convergent Cl^- tracer tests.
K values measured from the conservative tracer tests are approximately one-tenth to one-twentieth the average pumping-test value. Thus the K relevant to solute transport does not reflect the K measured by pumping tests. This discrepancy may be caused by the different scale and dimensionality of the two test types. Dispersion may prevent solutes from flowing exclusively within smaller high-conductivity paths which strongly affect the K measured by pumping tests.     

222Rn as Natural Tracer for LNAPL Recovery in a Crude Oil‐Contaminated Aquifer

The objective of this study was to investigate whether ²²²Rn in groundwater can be used as a tracer for light non‐aqueous phase liquid (LNAPL) quantification at a field site treated by dual‐phase LNAPL removal. After the break of a pipeline, 5 ha of soil in the nature reserve Coussouls de Crau in southern France was contaminated by 5100 m³ of crude oil. Part of this oil seeped into the underlying gravel aquifer and formed a floating oil body of about 3.9 ha. The remediation consists of plume management by hydraulic groundwater barriers and LNAPL extraction in the source zone. ²²²Rn measurements were performed in 21 wells in and outside the source zone during 15 months. In uncontaminated groundwater, the radon activity was relatively constant and remained always >11 Bq/L. The variability of radon activity measurements in wells affected by the pump‐and‐skim system was consistent with the measurements in wells that were not impacted by the system. The mean activities in wells in the source zone were, in general, significantly lower than in wells upgradient of the source zone, owing to partitioning of ²²²Rn into the oil phase. The lowest activities were found in zones with high non‐aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) recovery. LNAPL saturations around each recovery well were furthermore calculated during a period of high groundwater level, using a laboratory‐determined crude oil–water partitioning coefficient of 38.5 ± 2.9. This yielded an estimated volume of residual crude oil of 309 ± 93 m³ below the capillary fringe. We find that ²²²Rn is a useful and cheap groundwater tracer for finding zones of good LNAPL recovery in an aquifer treated by dual‐phase LNAPL removal, but that quantification of NAPL saturation using Rn is highly uncertain.     

Interpretation of Water Level Changes in the High Plains Aquifer in Western Kansas

Water level changes in wells provide a direct measure of the impact of groundwater development at a scale of relevance for management activities. Important information about aquifer dynamics and an aquifer's future is thus often embedded in hydrographs from continuously monitored wells. Interpretation of those hydrographs using methods developed for pumping‐test analyses can provide insights that are difficult to obtain via other means. These insights are demonstrated at two sites in the High Plains aquifer in western Kansas. One site has thin unconfined and confined intervals separated by a thick aquitard. Pumping‐induced responses in the unconfined interval indicate a closed (surrounded by units of relatively low permeability) system that is vulnerable to rapid depletion with continued development. Responses in the confined interval indicate that withdrawals are largely supported by leakage. Given the potential for rapid depletion of the unconfined interval, the probable source of that leakage, it is likely that large‐scale irrigation withdrawals will not be sustainable in the confined interval beyond a decade. A second site has a relatively thick unconfined aquifer with responses that again indicate a closed system. However, unlike the first site, previously unrecognized vertical inflow can be discerned in data from the recovery periods. In years of relatively low withdrawals, this inflow can produce year‐on‐year increases in water levels, an unexpected occurrence in western Kansas. The prevalence of bounded‐aquifer responses at both sites has important ramifications for modeling studies; transmissivity values from pumping tests, for example, must be used cautiously in regional models of such systems.     

Innovative Environmental Tracer Techniques for Evaluating Sources of Spring Discharge from a Carbonate Aquifer Bisected by a River

Littlefield Springs discharge about 1.6 m³/s along a 10‐km reach of the Virgin River in northwestern Arizona. Understanding their source is important for salinity control in the Colorado River Basin. Environmental tracers suggest that Littlefield Springs are a mixture of older groundwater from the regional Great Basin carbonate aquifer and modern (post‐1950s) seepage from the Virgin River. While corrected ¹⁴C apparent ages range from 1 to 9 ka, large amounts of nucleogenic ⁴He and low ³He/⁴He ratios suggest that the carbonate aquifer component is likely even older Pleistocene recharge. Modeled infiltration of precipitation, hydrogeologic cross sections, and hydraulic gradients all indicate recharge to the carbonate aquifer likely occurs in the Clover and Bull Valley Mountains along the northern part of the watershed, rather than in the nearby Virgin Mountains. This high‐altitude recharge is supported by relatively cool noble‐gas recharge temperatures and isotopically depleted δ²H and δ¹⁸O. Excess (crustal) SF₆ and ⁴He precluded dating of the modern component of water from Littlefield Springs using SF₆ and ³H/³He methods. Assuming a lumped‐parameter model with a binary mixture of two piston‐flow components, Cl^?/Br^?, Cl^?/F^?, δ²H, and CFCs indicate the mixture is about 60% Virgin River water and 40% groundwater from the carbonate aquifer, with an approximately 30‐year groundwater travel time for Virgin River seepage to re‐emerge at Littlefield Springs. This suggests that removal of high‐salinity sources upstream of the Virgin River Gorge would reduce the salinity of water discharging from Littlefield Springs into the Virgin River within a few decades.     

Aquifer parameter estimation using an incremental area method

Theoretical well functions have been derived over the years to predict ground water level behaviour in aquifer systems under stress owing to groundwater extraction. The drawdown data collected during pump tests are typically analysed using graphical curve‐matching procedures to estimate aquifer parameters based on these well functions. Difficulty in aquifer characteristic identification and parameter estimation may arise when the field data do not perfectly match the drawdown curves obtained from the well functions. The present study provides a new method for the interpretation of aquifer pump tests which supplements the existing curve‐matching procedures in case ideal conditions do not exist; the proposed method provides a greater degree of flexibility in the data analysis for diagnostic tool purposes. The method, referred to as the Incremental Area Method (IAM) is based on integrating the logarithmic‐based drawdown curves within a discrete time and matching the results with a corresponding time integral of the Theis ( 1935 ) Well Function which governs ideal confined aquifers. The application of the proposed method to synthetically generated data and field data showed that IAM represents a viable method which yields information on potential non‐idealness of the aquifer and provides aquifer parameter estimates thus potentially overcoming drawdown data curve‐matching difficulties. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.