A theoretical analysis of basin-scale groundwater temperature distribution

Abstract

The theory of regional groundwater flow is critical for explaining heat transport by moving groundwater in basins. Domenico and Palciauskas’s (1973) pioneering study on convective heat transport in a simple basin assumed that convection has a small influence on redistributing groundwater temperature. Moreover, there has been no research focused on the temperature distribution around stagnation zones among flow systems. In this paper, the temperature distribution in the simple basin is reexamined and that in a complex basin with nested flow systems is explored. In both basins, compared to the temperature distribution due to conduction, convection leads to a lower temperature in most parts of the basin except for a small part near the discharge area. There is a high-temperature anomaly around the basin-bottom stagnation point where two flow systems converge due to a low degree of convection and a long travel distance, but there is no anomaly around the basin-bottom stagnation point where two flow systems diverge. In the complex basin, there are also high-temperature anomalies around internal stagnation points. Temperature around internal stagnation points could be very high when they are close to the basin bottom, for example, due to the small permeability anisotropy ratio. The temperature distribution revealed in this study could be valuable when using heat as a tracer to identify the pattern of groundwater flow in large-scale basins. Domenico PA, Palciauskas VV (1973) Theoretical analysis of forced convective heat transfer in regional groundwater flow. Geological Society of America Bulletin 84:3803–3814