Heat carried by ground water serves as a tracer to identify surface water infiltration, flow through fractures, and flow patterns in ground water basins. Temperature measurements can be analyzed for recharge and discharge rates, the effects of surface warming, interchange with surface water, hydraulic conductivity of streambed sediments, and basin-scale permeability. Temperature data are also used in formal solutions of the inverse problem to estimate ground water flow and hydraulic conductivity. The fundamentals of using heat as a ground water tracer were published in the 1960s, but recent work has significantly expanded the application to a variety of hydrogeological settings. In recent work, temperature is used to delineate flows in the hyporheic zone, estimate submarine ground water discharge and depth to the salt-water interface, and in parameter estimation with coupled ground water and heat-flow models. While short reviews of selected work on heat as a ground water tracer can be found in a number of research papers, there is no critical synthesis of the larger body of work found in the hydrogeological literature. The purpose of this review paper is to fill that void and to show that ground water temperature data and associated analytical tools are currently underused and have not yet realized their full potential.

http://www.geology.wisc.edu/~andy/GW_Heat%20as%20a%20Tracer.pdf

Heat as a ground water tracer.

[1] We present a method for determining streambed seepage rates using time series thermal data. The new method is based on quantifying changes in phase and amplitude of temperature variations between pairs of subsurface sensors. For a reasonable range of streambed thermal properties and sensor spacings the time series method should allow reliable estimation of seepage rates for a range of at least ±10 m d � 1 (±1.2 � 10 � 2 ms � 1 ), with amplitude variations being most sensitive at low flow rates and phase variations retaining sensitivity out to much higher rates. Compared to forward modeling, the new method requires less observational data and less setup and data handling and is faster, particularly when interpreting many long data sets. The time series method is insensitive to streambed scour and sedimentation, which allows for application under a wide range of flow conditions and allows time series estimation of variable streambed hydraulic conductivity. This new approach should facilitate wider use of thermal methods and improve understanding of the complex spatial and temporal dynamics of surface water–groundwater interactions.

/pdf/quantifying-surface-water-groundwater-interactions-using-46b5l05kht.pdf

Quantifying surface water–groundwater interactions using time series analysis of streambed thermal records: Method development

A review of coupled groundwater and heat transfer theory is followed by an introduction to geothermal measurement techniques. Thereafter, temperature-depth profiles (geotherms) and heat discharge at springs to infer hydraulic parameters and processes are discussed. Several studies included in this review state that minimum permeabilities of approximately 5 × 10−17 < k
 min <10−15 m2 are required to observe advective heat transfer and resultant geotherm perturbations. Permeabilities below k
 min tend to cause heat-conduction-dominated systems, precluding inversion of temperature fields for groundwater flow patterns and constraint of permeabilities other than being <k
 min. Values of k
 min depend on the flow-domain aspect-ratio, faults and other heterogeneities, anisotropy of hydraulic and thermal parameters, heat-flow rates, and the water-table shape. However, the k
 min range is narrow and located toward the lower third of geologic materials, which exhibit permeabilities of 10−21 < k < 10−7 m2. Therefore, a wide range of permeabilities can be investigated by analyzing subsurface temperatures or heat discharge at springs. Furthermore, temperature is easy and economical to measure and because thermal material properties vary far less than hydraulic properties, temperature measurements tend to provide better-constrained groundwater flow and permeability estimates. Aside from hydrogeologic insights, constraint of advective/conductive heat transfer can also provide information on magmatic intrusions, metamorphism, ore deposits, climate variability, and geothermal energy.

Review: Geothermal heat as a tracer of large-scale groundwater flow and as a means to determine permeability fields

Well water temperatures are often collected simultaneously with water levels; however, temperature data are generally considered only as a water quality parameter and are not utilized as an environmental tracer. In this paper, water levels and seasonal temperatures are used to estimate hydraulic conductivities in a stream-aquifer system. To demonstrate this method, temperatures and water levels are analyzed from six observation wells along an example study site, the Russian River in Sonoma County, California. The range in seasonal ground water temperatures in these wells varied from <0.2 degrees C in two wells to approximately 8 degrees C in the other four wells from June to October 2000. The temperature probes in the six wells are located at depths between 3.5 and 7.1 m relative to the river channel. Hydraulic conductivities are estimated by matching simulated ground water temperatures to the observed ground water temperatures. An anisotropy of 5 (horizontal to vertical hydraulic conductivity) generally gives the best fit to the observed temperatures. Estimated conductivities vary over an order of magnitude in the six locations analyzed. In some locations, a change in the observed temperature profile occurred during the study, most likely due to deposition of fine-grained sediment and organic matter plugging the streambed. A reasonable fit to this change in the temperature profile is obtained by decreasing the hydraulic conductivity in the simulations. This study demonstrates that seasonal ground water temperatures monitored in observation wells provide an effective means of estimating hydraulic conductivities in alluvial aquifers.

Estimation of hydraulic conductivity in an alluvial system using temperatures.

Experimental evaluation of the applicability of phase, amplitude, and combined methods to determine water flux and thermal diffusivity from temperature time series using VFLUX 2.

[1] Parameter estimation is a powerful way to calibrate models. While head data alone are often insufficient to estimate unique parameters due to model nonuniqueness, flow-and-heat-transport modeling can constrain estimation and allow simultaneous estimation of boundary fluxes and hydraulic conductivity. In this work, synthetic and field models that did not converge when head data were used did converge when head and temperature were used. Furthermore, frequency domain analyses of head and temperature data allowed selection of appropriate modeling timescales. Inflows in the Wilton, Wisconsin, wetlands could be estimated over periods such as a growing season and over periods of a few days when heads were nearly steady and groundwater temperature varied during the day. While this methodology is computationally more demanding than traditional head calibration, the results gained are unobtainable using the traditional approach. These results suggest that temperature can efficiently supplement head data in systems where accurate flux calibration targets are unavailable.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2000WR000172

Using groundwater temperature data to constrain parameter estimation in a groundwater flow model of a wetland system

Improving wetland simulations by including heat transport in groundwater flow modeling

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Using groundwater temperature data to constrain parameter estimation in a groundwater flow model of a wetland system

Improving wetland simulations by including heat transport in groundwater flow modeling