Using isotope data to characterize and date groundwater in the southern sector of the Guaraní Aquifer System.

The Guaraní Aquifer System (SAG) is the largest transboundary aquifer in Latin America, extending beneath parts of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay. This paper presents the results of recent hydrogeological studies in the southern portion of the SAG. Locally, the abundance of surface water bodies precluded the use of conventional hydrological tools to characterize groundwater flows. Geological, hydrochemical and environmental isotope investigations were integrated to postulate a revised hydrogeological conceptual model. The revised geological model has provided a better definition of the geometry of the aquifer units and outlined the relevance of regional faults in controlling flow patterns. The new potentiometric map is consistent with groundwater flow from the SAG outcrops to the centre of the Corrientes Province, where upwards flows were identified. Hydrochemical and isotope data confirmed the widespread occurrence of mixing. Noble gas isotopes dissolved in groundwater (4He and 81Kr/Kr) provided residence times ranging from recent recharge up to 770 ± 130 ka. Groundwater age modelling confirmed the role of the geological structures in controlling groundwater flow. The southern sector of the SAG is a multilayer aquifer system with vertical flows and deep regional discharge near the Esteros del Iberá wetland area and along the Paraná and Uruguay rivers.

Krypton-81 in groundwater of the Culebra Dolomite near the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, New Mexico.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico is the first geologic repository for disposal of transuranic nuclear waste from defense-related programs of the US Department of Energy. It is constructed within halite beds of the Permian-age Salado Formation. The Culebra Dolomite, confined within Rustler Formation evaporites overlying the Salado Formation, is a potential pathway for radionuclide transport from the repository to the accessible environment in the human-disturbed repository scenario. Although extensive subsurface characterization and numerical flow modeling of groundwater has been done in the vicinity of the WIPP, few studies have used natural isotopic tracers to validate the flow models and to better understand solute transport at this site. The advent of Atom-Trap Trace Analysis (ATTA) has enabled routine measurement of cosmogenic (81)Kr (half-life 229,000 yr), a near-ideal tracer for long-term groundwater transport. We measured (81)Kr in saline groundwater sampled from two Culebra Dolomite monitoring wells near the WIPP site, and compared (81)Kr model ages with reverse particle-tracking results of well-calibrated flow models. The (81)Kr model ages are ~130,000 and ~330,000 yr for high-transmissivity and low-transmissivity portions of the formation, respectively. Compared with flow model results which indicate a relatively young mean hydraulic age (~32,000 yr), the (81)Kr model ages imply substantial physical attenuation of conservative solutes in the Culebra Dolomite and provide limits on the effective diffusivity of contaminants into the confining aquitards.