ALBERT

Description: Current climate change models for the south east UK predict changing rainfall patterns, with increased incidence of extreme events. The Chalk aquifer in the UK and northern France is susceptible to groundwater induced flooding under such conditions. In this methodological study we apply a frequency domain analysis approach to the Chalk aquifer to derive a transfer function between effective rainfall and groundwater level from 7 years of monitoring data from the North Heath Barn site, near Brighton. The derived transfer function was calibrated and validated against monitoring data, and then used to predict groundwater level for rainfall models for high, medium and low emissions scenarios from the UKCP09 database. The derived transfer function is most closely comparable to the linear aquifer model, despite evidence for both matrix and fracture or karst water flow in the Chalk, with transmissivity and unconfined storativity at the catchment scale of 1548 m 2 day −1 and 1.6x10 −2 . The application of the transfer function to UKCP09 rainfall data suggests that groundwater induced flooding may be about four times more frequent by 2040-2069 compared to 1961-1990 and seven times more frequent by 2070-2099. The model data also suggest an increase in the duration of groundwater minima relative to the reference period. Compared to deterministic modelling which requires detailed knowledge of aquifer heterogeneity and processes, the transfer function approach, although with limitations, is simpler, incorporating these factors into the analysis through frequency and phase coefficients, and thus may have the potential for groundwater risk assessment in other areas. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Description: The simulation of unstable invasion patterns in porous media flow is very challenging because small perturbations are amplified, so that slight differences in geometry or initial conditions result in significantly different invasion structures at later times. We present a detailed comparison of pore-scale simulations and experiments for unstable primary drainage in porous micromodels. The porous media consist of Hele-Shaw cells containing cylindrical obstacles. By means of soft lithography, we have constructed two experimental flow cells, with different degrees of heterogeneity in the grain size distribution. As the defending (wetting) fluid is the most viscous, the interface is destabilized by viscous forces, which promote the formation of preferential flow paths in the form of a branched finger structure. We model the experiments by solving the Navier-Stokes equations for mass and momentum conservation in the discretized pore space and employ the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method to track the evolution of the interface. We test different numerical models (a 2D vertical integrated model and a full-3D model) and different initial conditions, studying their impact on the simulated spatial distributions of the fluid phases. To assess the ability of the numerical model to reproduce unstable displacement, we compare several statistical and deterministic indicators. We demonstrate the impact of three main sources of error: i) the uncertainty on the pore space geometry, ii) the fact that the initial phase configuration cannot be known with an arbitrarily small accuracy, and iii) three dimensional effects. Although the unstable nature of the flow regime leads to different invasion structures due to small discrepancies between the experimental setup and the numerical model, a pore-by-pore comparison shows an overall satisfactory match between simulations and experiments. Moreover, all statistical indicators used to characterized the invasion structures are in excellent agreement. This validates the modeling approach, which can be used to complement experimental observations with information about quantities that are difficult or impossible to measure, such as the pressure and velocity fields in the two fluid phases. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Description: Temporal stability of soil water content is an often-observed phenomenon, which characterization finds multiple applications. Climate and variability in soil properties are usually mentioned as factors of temporal stability of soil water content, but their effects are far from clear. The objective of this work was to use soil water content modeling to evaluate the effects of climate and soil hydraulic properties on the temporal stability of soil water at different measurement schedules. We selected four representative climates found in USA and simulated the multiyear soil water content dynamics for sandy loam, loam, and silty clay loam soils, all having the lognormal spatial distribution of the saturated hydraulic conductivity. The CLIMGEN and the HYDRUS6 codes were used to generate weather patterns and to simulate soil water content respectively. Four different methods were applied to select the representative location. The low probability of having the same variability of mean relative differences of soil water under different climates was found in most of the cases. The probability that the variance of mean relative differences depended on sampling frequency was generally higher than 91% for the three soils. The inter-annual difference in mean relative differences variation from short and intensive summer campaigns was highly probable for all climates and soils. The representative locations changed as climate and measurement scheduling changed, and they were less pronounced for coarse textured soils. The Representative location selection methods based solely on bias provided more consistency as compared with other methods. The temporal stability appears to be the result of the interplay between climate, soil properties, and survey protocols. One implication of this factor interaction effect on temporal stability soil water content is that a simulation study can be useful to decide on the feasibility of including a search for temporal stability-based representative locations for a specific site. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Description: Geologic carbon storage in deep saline aquifers is a promising technology for reducing anthropogenic emissions into the atmosphere. Dissolution of injected CO 2 into resident brines is one of the primary trapping mechanisms generally considered necessary to provide long-term storage security. Given that diffusion of CO 2 in brine is woefully slow, convective dissolution, driven by a small increase in brine density with CO 2 saturation, is considered to be the primary mechanism of dissolution trapping. Previous studies of convective dissolution have typically only considered the convective process in the single phase region below the capillary transition zone and have either ignored the overlying two-phase region where dissolution actually takes place or replaced it with a virtual region with reduced or enhanced constant permeability. Our objective is to improve estimates of the long-term dissolution flux of CO 2 into brine by including the capillary transition zone in two-phase model simulations. In the fully two-phase model, there is a capillary transition zone above the brine-saturated region over which the brine saturation decreases with increasing elevation. Our two-phase simulations show that the dissolution flux obtained by assuming a brine-saturated, single-phase porous region with a closed upper boundary is recovered in the limit of vanishing entry pressure and capillary transition zone. For typical finite entry pressures and capillary transition zone, however, convection currents penetrate into the two-phase region. This removes the mass transfer limitation of the diffusive boundary layer and enhances the convective dissolution flux of CO 2 more than three times above the rate assuming single-phase conditions. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Description: Environmental tracers, such as tritium, have generally been used to estimate aquifer recharge under natural conditions. A tritium tracer test is presented for estimating recharge under semi-arid and irrigated conditions. The test was performed along 429 days (June 2007-August 2008) on an experimental plot located in SE Spain with drip irrigation and annual row crops (rotation of lettuce and melon), in which common agricultural practices were followed in open air. Tritiated water was sprinkled (simulated rainfall) over the plot, soil cores were taken at different depths and a liquid scintillation analyzer was used to measure tritium concentration in soil water samples. Tritium transport, as liquid as vapor phase, was simulated with the 1D numerical code SOLVEG. Simulations show that the crop water use was below potential levels, despite regular irrigation. Continuous high water content in soil promoted a great impact of rainfall events on the aquifer recharge. The results obtained from tritium tracer test have been compared with other independent recharge assessment, soil water balance method, in order to evaluate the reliability of the first one. Total recharge from tracer test was 476 mm for the October 2007-September 2008 period, versus 561 mm from soil water balance method for the same period, which represents 37.1 and 43.7% of the applied water (1284 mm, irrigation + precipitation), respectively. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Description: Abstract The main objective of this research was to analyse the effect of soil management on soil sealing and on soil water content under contrasting tillage practices and its influence on corn yield. The experimental research was carried out in a field cultivated with irrigated corn differentiated into three zones representing a gradient of soil texture (Z1, Z2, and Z3, i.e., increasingly coarser). Two plots under different soil management practices (conventional intensive tillage, CT, and no‐tillage, NT) were selected in each zone. The susceptibility to sealing of each soil and the steady infiltration rates were evaluated in the laboratory subjecting the soils to rainfall simulation applied at an intensity of 25 mm h−1. In addition, soil porosity under each treatment was quantified. Soil water content (0–90 cm depth) was determined gravimetrically at the beginning and the end of the growing cycle and at the surface (0–5 cm) during three growing seasons and continuously at two depths (5–15 and 50–60 cm) during the last growing cycle. Soil water content was simulated using the SIMPEL model, which was calibrated for the experimental conditions. Corn yield and above‐ground biomass were also analysed. Significant differences in soil sealing among zones, with decreasing soil sealing for coarser textures, and treatments were observed with infiltration rates that were near twice in NT than in CT, being the effect of soil cover significant in the reduction of soil detachment and soil losses. NT showed higher soil water content than CT, especially in the surface layers. Above‐ground biomass production was smaller in CT than in NT, and in the areas with higher sealing susceptibility was 30% to 45% smaller than in other zones, reaching the smallest values in Z1. A similar reduction in corn yield was observed between treatments being smaller in CT than in NT. No‐tillage has been confirmed as an effective technique that benefits soil physical properties as well as crop yields in relation to CT, being its impact greater in soils susceptible to sealing.

Description: The objective of this analysis is to demonstrate the feasibility of using a composite L2 SMOS soil moisture product for determining drought conditions by taking advantage of its spatial and temporal resolution. The work investigates the potential relationships between soil moisture anomalies and two drought indices, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), both calculated on a ten-day basis. As the two drought indices can be applied to different time scales for precipitation series, the influence of time scale on the drought definition is also studied. The anomalies were calculated both for the in situ soil moisture by REMEDHUS (Soil Moisture Measurement Stations Network, Spain) and from the SMOS L2 soil moisture product. In general, in situ anomalies exhibit higher correlation coefficients for the drought indices than those of SMOS, except for the shortest time scale. As expected, the short-term remotely sensed anomalies have a high response to precipitation events. This effect may be due to the greater sensitivity of SMOS data to rainfall, as well as to the spatial averaged nature of its observations. The optimal time scale was one month for the SMOS values and ranged between 30 and 50 days for the in situ values. The use of evapotranspiration in the calculation of the indices did not improve the description of the anomalies. The relationship between indices and soil moisture conditions provides encouraging results. Indeed, this method generates preliminary but valuable insights for future satellite products. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Description: This work extends an existing analytical solution for pressure buildup because of CO2 injection in brine aquifers by incorporating effects associated with partial miscibility. These include evaporation of water into the CO2 rich phase and dissolution of CO2 into brine and salt precipitation. The resulting equations are closed-form, including the locations of the associated leading and trailing shock fronts. Derivation of the analytical solution involves making a number of simplifying assumptions including: vertical pressure equilibrium, negligible capillary pressure, and constant fluid properties. The analytical solution is compared to results from TOUGH2 and found to accurately approximate the extent of the dry-out zone around the well, the resulting permeability enhancement due to residual brine evaporation, the volumetric saturation of precipitated salt, and the vertically averaged pressure distribution in both space and time for the four scenarios studied. While brine evaporation is found to have a considerable effect on pressure, the effect of CO2 dissolution is found to be small. The resulting equations remain simple to evaluate in spreadsheet software and represent a significant improvement on current methods for estimating pressure-limited CO2 storage capacity.

Description: Methods to select parsimonious and hydrologically consistent model structures are useful for evaluating dominance of hydrologic processes and representativeness of data. While information criteria (appropriately constrained to obey underlying statistical assumptions) can provide a basis for evaluating appropriate model complexity, it is not sufficient to rely upon the principle of maximum likelihood (ML) alone. We suggest that one must also call upon a “principle of hydrologic consistency,” meaning that selected ML structures and parameter estimates must be constrained (as well as possible) to reproduce desired hydrological characteristics of the processes under investigation. This argument is demonstrated in the context of evaluating the suitability of candidate model structures for lumped water balance modeling across the continental United States, using data from 307 snow-free catchments. The models are constrained to satisfy several tests of hydrologic consistency, a flow space transformation is used to ensure better consistency with underlying statistical assumptions, and information criteria are used to evaluate model complexity relative to the data. The results clearly demonstrate that the principle of consistency provides a sensible basis for guiding selection of model structures and indicate strong spatial persistence of certain model structures across the continental United States. Further work to untangle reasons for model structure predominance can help to relate conceptual model structures to physical characteristics of the catchments, facilitating the task of prediction in ungaged basins.

Description: Mediterranean aquifers are frequently subject to the joint effect of intensive exploitation and low recharge values. Besides, groundwater is the only available water resource in many Mediterranean regions. Groundwater recharge studies are therefore necessary to underpin water management practices. This manuscript presents a methodology to estimate groundwater recharge in a small limestone aquifer of SE Spain. The HYDROBAL model is used to calculate daily soil water balances based on hydrological and soil data, as well as on vegetation cover. Deep drainage model outputs are converted into water table variations by means of a lumped model add-on. The adjustment between observed and calculated water-table levels is in the order of r 2  = 0.87. This correlation coefficient suggests that HYDROBAL is a useful tool to estimate groundwater recharge in the region. In addition, differences in groundwater recharge rates are observed for dry, average and wet years. Estimated recharge rates range between 0 and 18% of the mean annual rainfall, which corresponds to a net recharge of 0 to 59 mm year -1 . Recharge rates increase proportionally with precipitation ( r 2  = 0.90). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.