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Title: Evaluating geothermal and hydrogeologic controls on regional groundwater temperature distribution

Journal Article · · Water Resources Research
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2015WR018204· OSTI ID:1480710
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4]
  1. USGS Oregon Water Science Center, Portland, OR (United States)
  2. USGS National Research Program, Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  3. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  4. USGS Geology, Menlo Park, CA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Described is a one-dimensional (1-D) analytic solution is developed for heat transport through an aquifer system where the vertical temperature profile in the aquifer is nearly uniform. The general anisotropic form of the viscous heat generation term is developed for use in groundwater flow simulations. The 1-D solution is extended to more complex geometries by solving the equation for piece-wise linear or uniform properties and boundary conditions. A moderately complex example, the Eastern Snake River Plain (ESRP), is analyzed to demonstrate the use of the analytic solution for identifying important physical processes. For example, it is shown that viscous heating is variably important and that heat conduction to the land surface is a primary control on the distribution of aquifer and spring temperatures. Use of published values for all aquifer and thermal properties results in a reasonable match between simulated and measured groundwater temperatures over most of the 300 km length of the ESRP, except for geothermal heat flow into the base of the aquifer within 20 km of the Yellowstone hotspot. Previous basal heat flow measurements (110 mW/m2) made beneath the ESRP aquifer were collected at distances of > 50 km from the Yellowstone Plateau, but a higher basal heat flow of 150 mW/m2 is required to match groundwater temperatures near the Plateau. As a result, the ESRP example demonstrates how the new tool can be used during preliminary analysis of a groundwater system, allowing efficient identification of the important physical processes that must be represented during more-complex 2-D and 3-D simulations of combined groundwater and heat flow.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1480710
Journal Information:
Water Resources Research, Vol. 52, Issue 2; ISSN 0043-1397
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 12 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (1)

The Influence of Episodic Shallow Magma Degassing on heat and Chemical Transport in Volcanic Hydrothermal Systems conference January 2019

Figures / Tables (7)

Figure 1(p. 4)figure Figure 1
Table 1(p. 8)table Table 1
Figure 2(p. 9)figure Figure 2
Figure 3(p. 10)figure Figure 3
Figure 4(p. 11)figure Figure 4
Figure 5(p. 12)figure Figure 5
Figure 6(p. 14)figure Figure 6

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Related Subjects

58 GEOSCIENCES
groundwater
geothermal
viscous heat dissipation