Net Inflow: An Important Target on the Path to Aquifer Sustainability.

Aquifers supporting irrigated agriculture are a resource of global importance. Many of these systems, however, are experiencing significant pumping-induced stress that threatens their continued viability as a water source for irrigation. Reductions in pumping are often the only option to extend the lifespans of these aquifers and the agricultural production they support. The impact of reductions depends on a quantity known as "net inflow" or "capture." We use data from a network of wells in the western Kansas portions of the High Plains aquifer in the central United States to demonstrate the importance of net inflow, how it can be estimated in the field, how it might vary in response to pumping reductions, and why use of "net inflow" may be preferred over "capture" in certain contexts. Net inflow has remained approximately constant over much of western Kansas for at least the last 15 to 25 years, thereby allowing it to serve as a target for sustainability efforts. The percent pumping reduction required to reach net inflow (i.e., stabilize water levels for the near term [years to a few decades]) can vary greatly over this region, which has important implications for groundwater management. However, the reduction does appear practically achievable (less than 30%) in many areas. The field-determined net inflow can play an important role in calibration of regional groundwater models; failure to reproduce its magnitude and temporal variations should prompt further calibration. Although net inflow is a universally applicable concept, the reliability of field estimates is greatest in seasonally pumped aquifers.

Water Well Hydrographs: An Underutilized Resource for Characterizing Subsurface Conditions.

Many of the world's major aquifers are under severe stress as a result of intensive pumping to support irrigated agriculture and provide drinking water supplies for millions. The question of what the future holds for these aquifers is one of global importance. Without better information about subsurface conditions, it will be difficult to reliably assess an aquifer's response to management actions and climatic stresses. One important but underutilized source of information is the data from monitoring well networks that provide near-continuous records of water levels through time. Most organizations running these networks are, by necessity, primarily focused on network maintenance. The result is that relatively little attention is given to interpretation of the acquired hydrographs. However, embedded in those hydrographs is valuable information about subsurface conditions and aquifer responses to natural and anthropogenic stresses. We demonstrate the range of insights that can be gleaned from such hydrographs using data from the High Plains aquifer index well network of the Kansas Geological Survey. We show how information about an aquifer's hydraulic state and lateral extent, the nature of recharge, the hydraulic connection to the aquifer and nearby pumping wells, and the expected response to conservation-based pumping reductions can be extracted from these hydrographs. The value of this information is dependent on accurate water-level measurements; errors in those measurements can make it difficult to fully exploit the insights that water-well hydrographs can provide. We therefore conclude by presenting measures that can help reduce the potential for such errors.

Interpretation of water level changes in the high plains aquifer in Western Kansas.

Water level changes in wells provide a direct measure of the impact of groundwater development at a scale of relevance for management activities. Important information about aquifer dynamics and an aquifer's future is thus often embedded in hydrographs from continuously monitored wells. Interpretation of those hydrographs using methods developed for pumping-test analyses can provide insights that are difficult to obtain via other means. These insights are demonstrated at two sites in the High Plains aquifer in western Kansas. One site has thin unconfined and confined intervals separated by a thick aquitard. Pumping-induced responses in the unconfined interval indicate a closed (surrounded by units of relatively low permeability) system that is vulnerable to rapid depletion with continued development. Responses in the confined interval indicate that withdrawals are largely supported by leakage. Given the potential for rapid depletion of the unconfined interval, the probable source of that leakage, it is likely that large-scale irrigation withdrawals will not be sustainable in the confined interval beyond a decade. A second site has a relatively thick unconfined aquifer with responses that again indicate a closed system. However, unlike the first site, previously unrecognized vertical inflow can be discerned in data from the recovery periods. In years of relatively low withdrawals, this inflow can produce year-on-year increases in water levels, an unexpected occurrence in western Kansas. The prevalence of bounded-aquifer responses at both sites has important ramifications for modeling studies; transmissivity values from pumping tests, for example, must be used cautiously in regional models of such systems.

Ferric oxyhydroxide microparticles in water.

Mineralogy and specific surface area are major controls on the stabilities of ferric oxyhydroxide microparticles in natural waters. The thermodynamic stabilities of ferric oxyhydroxides, as described by the activity product in solution pK = -log [Fe(3+)] [OH(-)](3) range from pK = 37.1 for freshly precipitated amorphous oxyhydroxide to pK = 44.2 for well crystallized goethite. The sizes of suspended oxyhydroxide particles in natural waters range from less than 0.01 mum to greater than 5 mum. Oxyhydroxides precipitated in the laboratory from solutions simulating high-iron natural waters are needlelike or lathlike in shape and have mean thicknesses as small as 60 A. Large specific surface areas resulting from the small sizes of ferric oxyhydroxide particles cause increased solubilities and thus decreased pK values. Specific surface areas of 40-170 m(2)/g determined for laboratory precipitates gave computed decreases in pK of 0.4 to 1.6 units.