Abstract
High-elevation groundwater sampled in 2003 in the Sacramento Mountains defines a line resembling an evaporation trend in δD-δ18O space. The trend results from recharge of winter precipitation into fractured limestone, with evaporation prior to recharge in broad mountain valleys. The same trend occurs in basin groundwater east and west of the range, indicating the high Sacramento Mountains as the principal regional water source, either direct from the limestone aquifers or from mountain-derived surface water. Tritium and carbon-14 indicate bulk residence times of a few decades in the high Sacramento Mountains and at Alamogordo, and of thousands of years south of Alamogordo and in the artesian aquifer near Artesia. Stable O, H isotope data fail to demonstrate the presence of Sacramento Mountains water in a saline aquifer of the Hueco Bolson (Texas).
Highlights
In the Basin and Range province of the southwest USA, stable isotope studies have proved useful in distinguishing sources of recharge where altitude effects are large, e.g., Tucson Basin [1], or whereWater 2014, 6 isotope effects due to latitude/altitude and evaporation generate river water that is distinctive beside native basin groundwater [2,3].The Sacramento Mountains of south-central New Mexico (Figure 1) include a broad area of forested, well-watered terrain, the source of perennial streams flowing east toward the Roswell Basin and thePecos River and of intermittent streams flowing west into the Tularosa Valley
Stable O and H isotopes have proved useful as environmental tracers in determining the relationships among various occurrences of groundwater in the study area, and the seasonality of recharge
Groundwater sampled from the high Sacramento Mountains in 2003 has a characteristic isotope signature
Summary
In the Basin and Range province of the southwest USA, stable isotope studies have proved useful in distinguishing sources of recharge where altitude effects are large, e.g., Tucson Basin [1], or whereWater 2014, 6 isotope effects due to latitude/altitude and evaporation generate river water that is distinctive beside native basin groundwater [2,3].The Sacramento Mountains of south-central New Mexico (Figure 1) include a broad area of forested, well-watered terrain, the source of perennial streams flowing east toward the Roswell Basin and thePecos River and of intermittent streams flowing west into the Tularosa Valley. The Sacramento Mountains of south-central New Mexico (Figure 1) include a broad area of forested, well-watered terrain, the source of perennial streams flowing east toward the Roswell Basin and the. Cloudcroft and Weed, and the freshwater lens on the western flank of the mountains, encompasses sites sampled for the first topic described above. Area 2 stretches from the eastern flank of the mountains to the Pecos River at Artesia, and encompasses sites samples for the second topic. There are two wet seasons, a weak summer monsoon (June to October) providing 65%–70% of the precipitation, and a winter season of rain and snow from frontal weather systems [8] The amounts of both winter and summer precipitation vary greatly from year to year (Figure 15 of [9]). Vegetation consists of coniferous forest interspersed with grassy valleys above
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