1 / 22

The study area

Using Environmental Tracers to Help Calibrate a Ground-Water Model of The Middle Rio Grande Basin. The study area. Ward Sanford and Niel Plummer USGS National Research Program, Reston, VA Doug McAda, Laura Bexfield & Scott Anderholm USGS Water Science Center, Albuquerque, NM.

nat
Download Presentation

The study area

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Using Environmental Tracers to Help Calibrate a Ground-Water Model ofThe Middle Rio Grande Basin The study area Ward Sanford and Niel Plummer USGS National Research Program, Reston, VA Doug McAda, Laura Bexfield & Scott Anderholm USGS Water Science Center, Albuquerque, NM

  2. Information Used to Construct and Calibrate the Model • Geologic Information • Hydrologic Information • Geochemical Information • MODFLOW, MODPATH and UCODE

  3. Geologic Information

  4. Geologic Studies were used to Develop the Model Geometry and Zonation Geologic model of the Middle Rio Grande Basin constrained by gravity data (Grauch)

  5. Inner Valley Alluvium River Gravels Ceja Gravels Medium to Coarse Sand Layer 1 Layer 2 Silts Medium Sand Fine to Medium Sand Eolian Sand Volcanic Sand Piedmont Slope Deposits Volcanic Flows Volcanic Intrusions

  6. Inner Valley Alluvium River Gravels Ceja Gravels Medium to Coarse Sand Layer 5 Layer 6 Silts Medium Sand Fine to Medium Sand Eolian Sand Volcanic Sand Piedmont Slope Deposits Volcanic Flows Volcanic Intrusions

  7. Hydrologic Information

  8. Middle Rio-Grande Basin Water Table in 1960 N Albuquerque

  9. Jemez Mountain-Front Recharge and Underflow Boundary Conditions Jemez River Western Basin Underflow Basin Underflow Rio Puerco Rio Grande Tijeras Arroyo Middle Rio-Grande Basin Boundary Eastern Mountain - Front Recharge Southwestern Basin Underflow Abo Arroyo Rio Salado

  10. Geochemical Information

  11. Deuterium Carbon-14 Middle Rio-Grande Basin Boundary pmC per mil 100 -120 80 -110 60 -100 -90 40 -80 -70 20 -60 0 -50

  12. Local northwest recharge Northern MF Recharge Hagan basin underflow Jemez underflow Rio Puerco Rio Grande Eastern Mountain Front Ladron Peak Abo Arroyo Basin Discharge

  13. Results

  14. Creating a “Trough” with Low Recharge Western Recharge Northwestern Recharge River Water Northeastern Recharge Eastern Recharge 40 km

  15. Water Levels For Layer 2

  16. Estimating Paleorecharge Rates

  17. Recharge Multiplier

  18. Recharge Multiplier

  19. Summary and Conclusions • Environmental Tracers are an important source of data to use in addition to geology and water levels to calibrate regional groundwater models • Recharge in the Middle Rio Grande Basin is much less than previously estimated, but was higher in the past. • The lower recharge rates can explain spatial features in both the water table and geochemical zones

More Related