Temperature Data Evaluation

Abstract

Groundwater temperature is sensitive to the competing processes of heat flow from below the advective transport of heat by groundwater flow. Because groundwater temperature is sensitive to conductive and advective processes, groundwater temperature may be utilized as a tracer to further constrain the uncertainty of predictions of advective radionuclide transport models constructed for the Nevada Test Site (NTS). Since heat transport, geochemical, and hydrologic models for a given area must all be consistent, uncertainty can be reduced by devaluing the weight of those models that do not match estimated heat flow. The objective of this study was to identify the quantity and quality of available heat flow data at the NTS. One-hundred-forty-five temperature logs from 63 boreholes were examined. Thirteen were found to have temperature profiles suitable for the determination of heat flow values from one or more intervals within the boreholes. If sufficient spatially distributed heat flow values are obtained, a heat transport model coupled to a hydrologic model may be used to reduce the uncertainty of a nonisothermal hydrologic model of the NTS.