干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

A regional flow and transport model is used to explore the implications of significant variability in Pleistocene and Holocene climates on hydraulic heads and C-14 activity. Simulations involve a 39 km slice of the Death Valley Flow System through Yucca Mountain toward the Amargosa Desert. The long-time scale over which infiltration has changed (tens-of-thousands of years) is matched by the large physical extent of the flow system (many tens-of-kilometers). Estimated paleo-infiltration rates were estimated using a juniper pollen percentage that extends from the last interglacial (LIG) period (approximately 120 kyrbp) to present. Flow and C-14 transport simulations show that groundwater flow changes markedly as a function of paleoclimate. At the last glacial maximum (LGM, 21 kyrbp), the recharge to the flow system was about an order-of-magnitude higher than present, and water table was more than 100 m higher. With large basin time constants, flow is complicated because hydraulic heads at a given location reflect conditions of the past, but at another location the flow may reflect present conditions. This complexity is also manifested by processes that depend on flow, for example C-14 transport. Without a model that accounts for the historical transients in recharge for at least the last 20,000 years, there is no simple way to deconvolve the C-14 dates to explain patterns of flow.