3 地下水年龄数据的应用

Why do we need to know the age of groundwater? What use will it have? What we will learn when we have the age of a groundwater sample? What will we know when we have the age that we did not know before? The applications of age data are grouped into two categories, those that are general applica-tions and those that are site-specific. Groundwater age data are discussed as a tool to evaluate the renewability of groundwater reservoirs, to constrain the parameters of groundwater flow and transport models, to study groundwater flow paths and vertical and horizontal flow velocities, to identify paleoclimate conditions (in combination with isotopes), to estimate groundwater recharge, to determine fracture and matrix properties and water velocities in fractured rock environments, to help study the trend of groundwater pollution, to iden-tify past seawater level fluctuation, to manage groundwater-driven dryland salinity, to map susceptibility of groundwater systems to contamination, and to be used in many more hydrological applications such as mixing, ground-water–surface water interaction, and seawater intrusion.

3.1 RENEWABILITY OF THE GROUNDWATER RESERVOIRS3.1 地下水库的可再生性

It is safe to argue that the most important and the unique application of groundwater age concept is its capacity to answer the question of renewabilty or replenishment of the groundwater resources. It is also safe to claim that groundwater age is, as yet, the only sound and concrete piece of scientific evi-dence to show that groundwater resources are recharged by modern precipi-tation, or else, the extracted groundwaters were accumulated in the aquifers by slow infiltration processes that happened a very long time ago. This appli-cation is more highlighted in the arid zones where due to the scarcity and peri-odicity of the rainfall, the question of recharge (if any) often remains open (Payne, 1988). An important fraction of young water within an extracted water sample is an indication of an actively renewable reservoir; the opposite, i.e., a considerable amount of old water in the sample, depicts a poorly recharging reservoir and/or significant internal mixing processes (Cornaton, 2004). This is exactly what Libby (1953) in those early days suggested, “the determination of tritium in wells should reveal whether their ultimate supplies are closely connected to the rainfall.” At a slightly larger scale, if there is a considerable percentage/volume of young water in a specific aquifer, we can be sure that the aquifer is being presently replenished by rainfall/snowfall recharges, and is sustainable. From a global perspective, it is important to establish what pro-portion of the world’s freshwater resources is not being renewed at present, but was recharged instead during the Pleistocene (Metcalfe et al. 1998) or even earlier geologic times. Information about the age of groundwater is required if one is to confidently define the sustainability of groundwater resources of any particular well field. Zongyu et al. (2005, p. 485) writes, “Two fundamen-tal questions related to the sustainability of the groundwater resources are (1) How old is this potable water supply? (2) What is the recharge of the deep confined aquifer? (are we ‘mining’ groundwater)?” By knowing the age of groundwater in our aquifers, we will be able to calculate the time that it takes for Mother Nature to replace the presently available groundwaters if we extract them. This will be a decisive tool enabling us to manage the precious groundwater resources in a sustainable manner.
To further explain the importance of the groundwater age concept, one should think of an important aquifer for which there is no solid information about renewability. Such an aquifer could be located anywhere in the world in an arid zone and in a less developed country, where no scientific data have been obtained to study the aquifer recharge processes. In such a case, it is believed that the most convincing and the quickest approach is to measure the age of groundwater.Techniques like measuring water-level fluctuations usually take months if not years to provide concrete and solid information. Age of groundwater in this hypothetical aquifer can quickly shed light on the renewa-bility and sustainability issues, which now surround most aquifers worldwide. P. K. Aggarwal, Head, Isotope Hydrology Section, IAEA, has said in regard to the specific application of the groundwater age concept, “Estimates of renewable groundwater resources and an understanding of related hydrologi-cal processes are critically dependent upon determining the presence and age of modern groundwater” (Aggarwal, 2002, page 2257). In fact, one of the three new initiatives of the IAEA, to enhance the scientific understanding of non-renewable and renewable groundwater resources, is to map very old ground-waters and to develop a series of GIS-based global maps of nonrenewable groundwater resources (Gaye et al. 2005). We might conclude this section with the excerpt of an article from The New York Times (Broad, 2005) referring to the question of how often a particular body of water is renewed. “In the past, water engineers would address such unknowns by carefully measuring rain and the levels of rivers and other bodies of water for many decades–-typically a half-century or more. It usually took that long to learn the subtleties of the local cycles. However, isotope hydrology can do it in days.”
Example By measuring tritium and 14C content of 17 groundwater samples, Vehagen et al. (1974) showed unambiguously for the first time that ground-waters in the northern Kalahari are directly, and in some cases rapidly, recharged by rain. The traditional scientific view was that the 6-m-thick sand overburden of the Kalahari desert prevented infiltrating rainwater from reach-ing phreatic water tables. Similarly, tritium content of water samples (0.04–12.9 TU) from shallow aquifer of Eastern Desert, near the intersection of Wadi El-Tarfa and the Nile River, Egypt, showed that the aquifer is at least partially maintained by modern recharge and the Nubian aquifer paleowater is not a significant component of this shallow aquifer (Sultan et al. 2000).

3.2 科学家和管理者的有效沟通工具——以及外行人的好奇心

One could also argue that the concept of groundwater age is the most easily understood scientific evidence when the groundwater professionals are to deal with resource managers and bureaucrats who often do not have a great deal of information about the hydrogeology and the groundwater hydraulics con-cepts. Effective communication between a resource manager and a ground-water professional can be made if the groundwater age data are available. It is easy to explain to resource managers what renewability means if we know the age of groundwater. Simply, tell “them” that this groundwater that “you” are extracting infiltrated into the subsurface environment 3,000 years ago. So if “you” use it now, it will take another 3,000 years to replace it. Therefore, “you” should take great care in using it and in preserving it for the future gen-erations. Explain further that extracting very old, nonrenewable groundwater resources can have serious political and sociological implications (Clarke and Fritz, 1997) and should be viewed as a typical example of “groundwater mining.” We refer again to the same article in The New York Timess (Broad, 2005), where we read, “For instance, if the method reveals that the water in a well is young and recently derived from rain, villagers can pump away vigor-ously. But if it turns out to be very old—what scientists call fossil water—they need to move gingerly, taking care not to exhaust the water supply.”
The groundwater age concept is also attractive for most laymen. Just have a look at this web posted question (in 2000) from Christchurch, New Zealand (www.madsci.org/posts/archives/nov2000/973783743.Es.q.html):“I heard some-where that it is possible to tell the ‘age’ of groundwater (the year it was last on the surface of the earth) through a ‘signature’ of an isotope left on the water when it was last on the surface. I have a well/bore that is very deep and am curious to ascertain the ‘age’ of the water. Can anyone help? Thanks Geoff.” Many nonscientists become immediately interested in the topic when they hear of such a thing as “age of groundwater”. In fact, Payne (1988) argues that during the early days of isotope hydrology and isotope techniques, some of the most attractive work for hydrologists was the possibility of dating ground-water. In terms of scientific advancement, groundwater age-dating ranks high among other advances in the 20th century.

3.3 年龄监测以防止含水层过度开发和污染

Increase in the population density often leads to an exponential increase in the demand on the aquifer. Once residences or industries are established, it is very difficult to limit their water supply. Overdevelopment can eventually lead to limited supply, with the greatest effects being to those districts farthest from the aquifers recharge zone (supply source). Since underutilized lands gener-ally surround populated areas, housing and industrial development extends in directions reflecting the highest commercial yield. However, if the developing areas encroach into the recharge zone, new wells drilled to satisfy the eminent demand could create shortages if pumping exceeds recharge (The preceding lines are summarized from the Beta Analytic, Inc., Radiocarbon Dating Website.) By measuring the age of the water at certain time intervals within a district’s well field (say once every five years), it would be possible to iden-tify overexploitation before it happens. If the groundwater, being extracted, increases in age with time (becomes older and older), it means that a higher proportion of water is drawn from slow-moving storage. In contrast, if the age of groundwater being withdrawn decreases with time (becomes younger and younger), it means that a higher proportion of extracted water is derived from active present recharge. This shows that either the pumping rate has increased or the source water has changed (i.e., river recharge instead of rainfall recharge). This condition though does not imply groundwater mining, but it may not be a good sign in terms of contamination because eventually surface contaminants (if present) dissolved in very young waters (which may be contaminated) will reach the well field. Therefore, the best situation in terms of resource management is not to have sharp changes (either decrease or increase) in the age of groundwater that is being extracted. In fact, if the extracted water becomes too young, then there won’t be enough time for natural purification and attenuation of pollutants like viruses or microbes to take place (this is explained in later sections). Hence, regular dating of the groundwater from well fields can provides a mechanism to monitor, under-stand, and control exploitation and contamination of the aquifer.

3.4 ESTIMATION OF THE RECHARGE RATE
This particular usage of groundwater age data is perhaps the most widely applied of all. An applied and comprehensive reference dealing with this topic is that by Xu and Beekman (2003), which is available freely in PDF format at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001324/132404e.pdf.
Figure 3.1 illustrates in a simple way the approach to calculate the recharge rate to a groundwater system by age data. The procedure is to have either 1.    a minimum of two ages along the vertical line at the point of interest,
i.    e., age data must be obtained from a piezometer nest, which comprises at least two piezometers opened to the aquifer at different depths, or
2.    the vertical position of the bomb peak tritium in the aquifer. It should be noted that the groundwater flow should consist of only one vertical component with negligible horizontal movement. The second approach may not be particularly accurate because of the difference between the flow rates in the saturated and unsaturated zones.

Example 1 A classic and a comprehensive example of calculating recharge rate by groundwater age data is the study by Solomon et al. (1993). They cal-culated the recharge rate to a shallow unconfined silty sands and clay lamel-lae aquifer, near Strugeon Falls, Ontario, Canada, by locating bomb peak tritium in 1986 and in 1991 in a set of piezometer nests as well as by measur-ing the age of groundwater along vertical profiles where the flow was vertical and little to no horizontal flow was present. Figure 3.2 depicts some results of their study that were used to calculate the recharge rate using the following two procedures: