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Water Residence Times by Isotopic Techniques
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Water Residence Times by Isotopic Techniques

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydrology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 February 2022) | Viewed by 5579

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Giovanni Martinelli

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
INGV National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Department of Palermo, Via Ugo La Malfa 153, 90146 Palermo, Italy
Interests: mineral induced pollution phenomena; raw materials; tectonics; structural geology; water quality; environmental monitoring; environmental pollution; geological mapping; field geology; environmental impact assessment; sedimentology
Dr. Vincent Marc

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Avignon University, Research unit EMMAH, Hydro Group
Interests: catchment hydrology; isotope hydrology; hydrochemistry; groundwater hydrology; surface–subsurface interactions; landslide hydrology
Dr. Federico Cervi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Via Maccagnano, Reggio Emilia, Italy
Interests: hydrogeology; hydrochemistry; tracers; isotopes; fractured and porous media; groundwater
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In hydrological and hydrogeological studies worldwide, mean residence time (MRT) and residence time distribution (RTD) assessment have demonstrated to be a significant tool for unravelling flow-paths at both catchments and aquifers scales. With reference to both surficial and groundwater bodies, MRT and RTD allow better understanding the mechanisms of recharge, exchange, and transfers of water molecules within the water cycle, allowing hydrological and hydrogeological conceptual models to be more representative of the natural reality. In the end, this information is extremely useful for pollution vulnerability and risk planning. As an example, low values of MRTs suggest that monitored surface water and groundwater are prone to contamination, water molecules’ flow-paths being reduced (i.e., the subsequent landuse planning must be as strict as possible). By contrast, higher values of MRTs indicate that monitored water has travelled for a long time prior to being sampled, and subsequent proneness to contamination is somehow reduced (i.e., planning activities can be less stringent) and further geological risks could arise, such as land subsidence or reservoir exhaustion. To be effective, the selection of the isotopes to be used must be accurate and reasoned before the investigation campaign. The purpose of this Special Issue is therefore to collect a current picture of the use of such tools in hydrological and hydrogeological studies together with uncertainties and problems that may be related.  

Manuscripts regarding all recent advances in the characterization of RT, including new sampling strategies (e.g., high-frequency isotope monitoring) or modeling approaches to capture RTD will be welcome. Some examples of challenging questions are:

  • How can global climate change affect MRT and RTD?
  • How can RT knowledge help water quality management?
  • How can we reduce uncertainties (e.g., multitracing)?
  • How can groundwater–surface water interactions alter RT in both water bodies?

Dr. Giovanni Martinelli
Dr. Vincent Marc
Dr. Federico Cervi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Residence times
  • Stable and radioactive isotopes
  • Hydrogeology
  • Young water fraction
  • Contaminant
  • Land subsidence
  • Storage selection functions
  • Lumped parameter models
  • Particle tracking
  • Catchment hydrology

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 6995 KiB  
Article
Regional-Scale Distribution of Helium Isotopes in Aquifers: How Informative Are They as Groundwater Tracers and Chronometers?
by Daniele Luigi Pinti, Marie Larocque, Pauline Méjean, Marion Saby, Mario Alberto Hernández-Hernández, Sylvain Gagné, Emilie Roulleau, Yuji Sano, Maria Clara Castro, Takuya Matsumoto and Viorel Horoi
Water 2022, 14(12), 1940; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14121940 - 16 Jun 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2246
Abstract
This study presents an almost entirely unpublished dataset of 121 samples of groundwater analyzed for helium concentration and its isotopic ratio (3He/4He) in two adjacent watersheds of the St. Lawrence Lowlands, in a region with intensive agricultural activities in [...] Read more.
This study presents an almost entirely unpublished dataset of 121 samples of groundwater analyzed for helium concentration and its isotopic ratio (3He/4He) in two adjacent watersheds of the St. Lawrence Lowlands, in a region with intensive agricultural activities in the southern Québec Province, Eastern Canada. Most of the samples were collected in the regional bedrock fractured aquifer hosted in mid-Ordovician siliciclastic shales, on a total surface of 7500 km2. Even with this low-density sampling, and in a heterogeneous and fractured aquifer, the helium isotopes bring precious information on the recharge conditions and on chemical evolution of water. The helium spatial interpolation does not show a clear isotopic gradient through the basin. However, it shows progressive enrichment of radiogenic 4He in the confined part of the aquifer. The atmospheric and/or tritiogenic-rich helium occurs at the recharge in the Appalachians and in the middle of the plain, where impermeable cover is limited, and local infiltration of meteoric freshwater reaches the bedrock aquifer. The relation between the total dissolved solids (TDS) and 3He/4He ratios remains elusive. However, on discriminating the samples with the dominant chemistry of water, a clear trend is observed with 3He/4He ratio, suggesting that radiogenic 4He accumulates together with dissolved solids and with increasing time (indicated by progressively older 14C ages). Finally, the noble gas temperatures (NGTs) obtained from concentrations of the other noble gases (Ne, Ar, Kr and Xe) brings constraints on the earlier recharge conditions during the Holocene. Particularly, the NGTs showed that the studied aquifers were continuously replenished, even under ice-sheet cover in the last 10,000 years. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Residence Times by Isotopic Techniques)
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16 pages, 2998 KiB  
Article
A Preliminary Assessment of Young Water Fractions in Groundwater from Alluvial Aquifers Facing the Northern Italian Apennines
by Giovanni Martinelli, Federico Cervi, Andrea Dadomo and Gianluca Medioli
Water 2022, 14(4), 659; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14040659 - 20 Feb 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1804
Abstract
This study sums up the first estimates of the young water fraction (Fyw; here understood as the percentage proportion of groundwater passing through the well’s screen and younger than approximately 2–3 months) from groundwater collected in 75 wells from alluvial fans [...] Read more.
This study sums up the first estimates of the young water fraction (Fyw; here understood as the percentage proportion of groundwater passing through the well’s screen and younger than approximately 2–3 months) from groundwater collected in 75 wells from alluvial fans facing the northern Italian Apennines of Italy. The Fyw estimates were based on a monthly dataset of water-stable isotopes (oxygen-18 (18O)) from surficial water (9 rivers), while the dataset of groundwater (75 wells) consisted of three-monthly isotopic data. In the cases of surficial water and stable isotopes, these lasted over the period of January 2003 to December 2007, while in the case of groundwater, the data were collected from January 2005 to December 2007. The values of Fyw were estimated by means of a sine-wave fitting technique; the results made evident the presence of unexpectedly reduced differences between groundwater. In particular, shallower groundwater hosted in aquifers from the apical parts of the alluvial fans (i.e., aquifers characterized by the coarsest materials such as gravels and sands, and closest to the recharge areas) showed similar values of Fyw to the deepest aquifers from the distal parts; however, former studies mentioned here evidenced the existence of poorly recharged old groundwater. Our results seem to confirm a complex behavior of these aquifers compared with what had previously been thought. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Residence Times by Isotopic Techniques)
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20 pages, 9221 KiB  
Article
Multi Frequency Isotopes Survey to Improve Transit Time Estimation in a Situation of River-Aquifer Interaction
by Angélique Poulain, Vincent Marc, Marina Gillon, Anne-Laure Cognard-Plancq, Roland Simler, Milanka Babic and Marc Leblanc
Water 2021, 13(19), 2695; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13192695 - 29 Sep 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1750
Abstract
The Barthelasse alluvial aquifer is used to supply water to 180,000 inhabitants. The pumping field is located less than 200 m from the Rhône and is 100% fed by water from the Rhône, which makes it particularly vulnerable to any pollution from the [...] Read more.
The Barthelasse alluvial aquifer is used to supply water to 180,000 inhabitants. The pumping field is located less than 200 m from the Rhône and is 100% fed by water from the Rhône, which makes it particularly vulnerable to any pollution from the Rhône. Between the Rhône and the pumping field is a Girardon unit, an arrangement that can be found regularly along the banks of the lower and middle reaches of the Rhône, and whose role is to stabilise the banks (alluvial deposits) and to facilitate river navigation. In order to know the transfer times between the Rhône and the pumping field, fortnightly monitoring was carried out over a hydrological year, as well as hourly monitoring during a flood in the winter of 2019. The Rhône shows a cyclicality in its isotopic signature with enrichment in heavy isotopes during the winter period, particularly during floods, and a depletion during the summer period. This variation is found well within the associated alluvial aquifer. The application of LPMs models showed that the average transfer time between the Rhône and the Girardon unit was 20 days and 50 days between the Rhône and the Barthelasse pumping. This study highlighted the importance of using several sampling frequencies to consider the diversity of hydrological situations. For the Rhône, event-based monitoring (flooding) proved to be relevant to account for isotopic variability throughout the year. This work also highlighted the impact of the disruption of hydraulic exchanges between the river and the water table caused by the presence of the Girardon unit in terms of the propagation of contaminants. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Residence Times by Isotopic Techniques)
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