Transient bacterial contamination of the dual-porosity aquifer at Walkerton,Ontario, Canada

Contamination of the Paleozoic carbonate aquifer at Walkerton (Ontario, Canada) by pathogenic bacteria following heavy rain in May 2000 resulted in 2,300 illnesses and seven deaths. Subsequent tracer testing showed that there was rapid groundwater flow in the aquifer, and also rapid exchange between the aquifer and the ground surface. Electrical conductivity (EC) profiling during a 3-day pumping test showed that most flow was through bedding-plane fractures spaced about 10 m apart, that there were substantial contrasts in EC in the major fracture flows, and that there were rapid changes over time. Total coliform sampling revealed transient groundwater contamination, particularly after heavy rain and lasting up to a few days. These characteristics can be understood in terms of the dual-porosity nature of the aquifer. Most of the storage is in the matrix, but this can be considered to be static in the short term. Almost all transport is through the fracture network, which has rapid groundwater flow (～100 m/day) and rapid transmission of pressure pulses due to the high hydraulic diffusivity. Rapid recharge can occur through thin and/or fractured overburden and at spring sites where flow is reversed by pumping during episodes of surface flooding. These characteristics facilitated the ingress of surface-derived bacteria into the aquifer, and their rapid transport within the aquifer to pumping wells. Bacterial presence is common in carbonate aquifers, and this can be explained by the well-connected, large-aperture fracture networks in these dual-porosity aquifers, even though many, such as at Walkerton, lack karst landforms.     

Effects of sediment pulses on bed relief in bar‐pool channels

To further develop prediction of the range of morphological adjustments associated with sediment pulses in bar‐pool channels, we analyze channel bed topographic data collected prior to and following the removal of two dams in Oregon: Marmot Dam on the Sandy River and Brownsville Dam on the Calapooia River. We hypothesize that, in gravel‐bed, bar‐pool channels, the response of bed relief to sand and gravel sediment pulses is a function of initial relief and pulse magnitude. Modest increases in sediment supply to initially low‐relief, sediment‐poor cross‐sections will increase bed relief and variance of bed relief via bar deposition. Modest increases in sediment supply to initially high‐relief cross‐sections, characteristic of alternate bar morphology, will result in decreased bed relief and variance of relief via deposition in bar‐adjacent pools. These hypothesized adjustments are measured in terms of bed relief, which we define as the difference in elevation between the pool‐bottom and bar‐top. We evaluate how relief varies with sediment thickness, where both relief and mean sediment thickness at a cross‐section are normalized by the 90th percentile of observed relief values within a reach prior to a sediment pulse. Field measurements generally supported the stated hypotheses, demonstrating how introduction of a sediment pulse to low‐relief reaches can increase mean and variance of relief, while introduction to high‐relief reaches can decrease the mean and variance of bed relief, at least temporarily. In general, at both sites, the degree of impact increased with the thickness of sediment delivered to the cross‐section. Results thus suggest that the analysis is a useful step for understanding the morphological effects of sediment pulses introduced to gravel‐bed, bar‐pool channels. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hydro‐meteorological drivers and sources of suspended sediment flux in the pro‐glacial zone of the retreating Castle Creek Glacier,Cariboo Mountains,British Columbia,Canada

Glaciers are major agents of erosion that increase sediment load to the downstream fluvial system. The Castle Creek Glacier, British Columbia, Canada, has retreated ~1.0 km in the past 70 years. Suspended sediment concentration (SSC) and streamflow (Q) were monitored independently at five sites within its pro‐glacial zone over a 60 day period from July to September 2011, representing part of the ablation season. Meteorological data were collected from two automatic weather stations proximal to the glacier. The time‐series were divided into hydrologic days and the shape and magnitude of the SSC response to hydro‐meteorological conditions (‘cold and wet’, ‘hot and dry’, ‘warm and damp’, and ‘storm’) were categorized using principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA). Suspended sediment load (SSL) was computed and summarized for the categories. The distribution of monitoring sites and results of the multivariate statistical analyses describe the temporal and spatial variability of suspended sediment flux and the relative importance of glacial and para‐glacial sediment sources in the pro‐glacial zone. During the 2011 study period, ~ 60% of the total SSL was derived from the glacial stream and sediment deposits proximal to the terminus of the glacier; during ‘storm’ events, that contribution dropped to ~40% as the contribution from diffuse and point sources of sediment throughout the pro‐glacial zone and within the meltwater channels increased. While ‘storm’ events accounted for just 3% of the study period, SSL was ~600% higher than the average over the monitoring period, and ~20% of the total SSL was generated in that time. Determining how hydro‐meteorological conditions and sediment sources control sediment fluxes will assist attempts to predict how pro‐glacial zones respond to future climate changes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sensitivity of interfacial hydraulics to the microtopographic roughness of water‐lain gravels

Flow within the interfacial layer of gravel‐bed rivers is poorly understood, but this zone is important because the hydraulics here transport sediment, generate flow structures and interact with benthic organisms. We hypothesized that different gravel‐bed microtopographies generate measurable differences in hydraulic characteristics within the interfacial layer. This was tested using a high density of spatially and vertically distributed, velocity time series measured in the interfacial layers above three surfaces of contrasting microtopography. These surfaces had natural water‐worked textures, captured in the field using a casting procedure. Analysis was repeated for three discharges, with Reynolds numbers between 165000 and 287000, to evaluate whether discharge affected the impact of microtopography on interfacial flows. Relative submergence varied over a small range (3.5 to 8.1) characteristic of upland gravel‐bed rivers. Between‐surface differences in the median and variance of several time‐averaged and turbulent flow parameters were tested using non‐parametric statistics. Across all discharges, microtopographic differences did not affect spatially averaged (median) values of streamwise velocity, but were associated with significant differences in its spatial variance, and did affect spatially averaged (median) turbulent kinetic energy. Sweep and ejection events dominated the interfacial region above all surfaces at all flows, but there was a microtopographic effect, with Q2 and Q4 events less dominant and structures less persistent above the surface with the widest relief distribution, especially at the highest Reynolds number flow. Results are broadly consistent with earlier work, although this analysis is unique because of the focus on interfacial hydraulics, spatially averaged ‘patch scale’ metrics and a statistical approach to data analysis. An important implication is that observable differences in microtopography do not necessarily produce differences in interfacial hydraulics. An important observation is that appropriate roughness parameterizations for gravel‐bed rivers remain elusive, partly because the relative contributions to flow resistance of different aspects of bed microtopography are poorly constrained. © 2014 The Authors. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Adjacent catchments with similar patterns of land use and climate have markedly different dissolved organic carbon concentration and runoff dynamics

Temporal patterns in specific runoff, dissolved organic carbon concentrations [DOC] and fluxes were examined during two periods: 1994–1997 (period 1) and 2007–2009 (period 2) in five adjacent tributary catchments of Lake Simcoe, the largest lake in southern Ontario, Canada. The catchments displayed similar patterns of land use change with increases in urbanization (5–16%) and forest cover (0.2–4%) and declines in agriculture (4–8%) between 1994 and 2008. Climate in the catchments was similar; temperature increased slightly, but no significant change in precipitation was observed. Despite similar pattern of climate and land use, runoff responses and tributary [DOC] were different across the catchments. Following a very dry year (i.e. 1999), runoff increased steadily until the end of record. We observed increased variability in tributary [DOC] and higher DOC exports in period 2. This led to ~10% increase in [DOC] and a 13% increase in flux between the two study periods. Between the two periods, [DOC] increased by 15% in spring and 25% in summer, whereas flux increased by 17% in spring and 48% in summer. [DOC] was consistently higher in the growing (summer + autumn) than the dormant (winter + spring, minus spring melt months) seasons, but no unique pattern or simple linear flow/concentrations relationships existed. This suggests complex spatial and temporal pattern to runoff controls on DOC and flow dynamics in adjacent catchments. We therefore caution against extrapolating from monitored to unmonitored catchments. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Low-frequency scaling applied to stochastic finite-fault modeling

Stochastic finite-fault modeling is an important tool for simulating moderate to large earthquakes. It has proven to be useful in applications that require a reliable estimation of ground motions, mostly in the spectral frequency range of 1 to 10 Hz, which is the range of most interest to engineers. However, since there can be little resemblance between the low-frequency spectra of large and small earthquakes, this portion can be difficult to simulate using stochastic finite-fault techniques. This paper introduces two different methods to scale low-frequency spectra for stochastic finite-fault modeling. One method multiplies the subfault source spectrum by an empirical function. This function has three parameters to scale the low-frequency spectra: the level of scaling and the start and end frequencies of the taper. This empirical function adjusts the earthquake spectra only between the desired frequencies, conserving seismic moment in the simulated spectra. The other method is an empirical low-frequency coefficient that is added to the subfault corner frequency. This new parameter changes the ratio between high and low frequencies. For each simulation, the entire earthquake spectra is adjusted, which may result in the seismic moment not being conserved for a simulated earthquake. These low-frequency scaling methods were used to reproduce recorded earthquake spectra from several earthquakes recorded in the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) Next Generation Attenuation Models (NGA) database. There were two methods of determining the stochastic parameters of best fit for each earthquake: a general residual analysis and an earthquake-specific residual analysis. Both methods resulted in comparable values for stress drop and the low-frequency scaling parameters; however, the earthquake-specific residual analysis obtained a more accurate distribution of the averaged residuals.     

Potential environmental issues of CO2 storage in deep saline aquifers: Geochemical results from the Frio-I Brine Pilot test,Texas, USA

Sedimentary basins in general, and deep saline aquifers in particular, are being investigated as possible repositories for large volumes of anthropogenic CO₂ that must be sequestered to mitigate global warming and related climate changes. To investigate the potential for the long-term storage of CO₂ in such aquifers, 1600 t of CO₂ were injected at 1500 m depth into a 24-m-thick “C” sandstone unit of the Frio Formation, a regional aquifer in the US Gulf Coast. Fluid samples obtained before CO₂ injection from the injection well and an observation well 30 m updip showed a Na–Ca–Cl type brine with ∼93,000 mg/L TDS at saturation with CH₄ at reservoir conditions; gas analyses showed that CH₄ comprised ∼95% of dissolved gas, but CO₂ was low at 0.3%. Following CO₂ breakthrough, 51 h after injection, samples showed sharp drops in pH (6.5–5.7), pronounced increases in alkalinity (100–3000 mg/L as HCO₃) and in Fe (30–1100 mg/L), a slug of very high DOC values, and significant shifts in the isotopic compositions of H₂O, DIC, and CH₄. These data, coupled with geochemical modeling, indicate corrosion of pipe and well casing as well as rapid dissolution of minerals, especially calcite and iron oxyhydroxides, both caused by lowered pH (initially ∼3.0 at subsurface conditions) of the brine in contact with supercritical CO₂.     

Evidence for deep anaerobic biodegradation associated with rapid sedimentation and burial in the Beaufort–Mackenzie basin,Canada

Formation waters of the 14 km thick late Cretaceous–Cenozoic Beaufort–Mackenzie basin were examined as part of a larger project to better understand the petroleum potential of the region, where early exploration defined petroleum reserves of 744 × 10⁹ bbls recoverable crude oil and 11.74 tcf gas. Historical water analyses (2583 samples from 250 wells drilled up to 5 km depth) were compiled and culled to remove incomplete and poor quality samples. The resultant database shows a broad range of salinity and water chemistry that has no systematic relationship with depth. Three main water types are defined, paleo seawater, and freshwaters related to a Miocene age gravity-driven flow system, and low TDS–high alkalinity waters. High alkalinity waters are isolated in overpressured fault blocks that were rapidly buried by post-Miocene Iperk shale deposition. The high alkalinities (up to 9000 mg/L) are interpreted to be related to in situ CO₂ generation through anaerobic methanogenesis in response to freshwater invasion. The dominant control on biogenic gas generation appears to be maximum burial temperature rather than the modern temperature distribution. This is consistent with the paleopasteurization model that suggests once critical burial temperatures are reached, sterilized rocks are inhibited from further biodegradation, even when temperatures subsequently drop back into the habitable zone.