TY - JOUR
T1 - Competition for shrinking window of low salinity groundwater
AU - Ferguson, Grant
AU - McIntosh, Jennifer C.
AU - Perrone, Debra
AU - Jasechko, Scott
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by an NSERC Discovery Grant (RGPIN-2017–05568) to G Ferguson, grants from the National Science Foundation (EAR-1322805) and W M Keck Foundation (989941; PI P. Reiners) to J McIntosh and a Global Water Futures grant to G Ferguson and J McIntosh. The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2018/11/14
Y1 - 2018/11/14
N2 - Groundwater resources are being stressed from the top down and bottom up. Declining water tables and near-surface contamination are driving groundwater users to construct deeper wells in many US aquifer systems. This has been a successful short-term mitigation measure where deep groundwater is fresh and free of contaminants. Nevertheless, vertical salinity profiles are not well-constrained at continental-scales. In many regions, oil and gas activities use pore spaces for energy production and waste disposal. Here we quantify depths that aquifer systems transition from fresh-to-brackish and where oil and gas activities are widespread in sedimentary basins across the United States. Fresh-brackish transitions occur at relatively shallow depths of just a few hundred meters, particularly in eastern US basins. We conclude that fresh groundwater is less abundant in several key US basins than previously thought; therefore drilling deeper wells to access fresh groundwater resources is not feasible extensively across the continent. Our findings illustrate that groundwater stores are being depleted not only by excessive withdrawals, but due to injection, and potentially contamination, from the oil and gas industry in areas of deep fresh and brackish groundwater.
AB - Groundwater resources are being stressed from the top down and bottom up. Declining water tables and near-surface contamination are driving groundwater users to construct deeper wells in many US aquifer systems. This has been a successful short-term mitigation measure where deep groundwater is fresh and free of contaminants. Nevertheless, vertical salinity profiles are not well-constrained at continental-scales. In many regions, oil and gas activities use pore spaces for energy production and waste disposal. Here we quantify depths that aquifer systems transition from fresh-to-brackish and where oil and gas activities are widespread in sedimentary basins across the United States. Fresh-brackish transitions occur at relatively shallow depths of just a few hundred meters, particularly in eastern US basins. We conclude that fresh groundwater is less abundant in several key US basins than previously thought; therefore drilling deeper wells to access fresh groundwater resources is not feasible extensively across the continent. Our findings illustrate that groundwater stores are being depleted not only by excessive withdrawals, but due to injection, and potentially contamination, from the oil and gas industry in areas of deep fresh and brackish groundwater.
KW - enhanced oil recovery
KW - groundwater
KW - hydraulic fracturing
KW - injection wells
KW - pore space competition
KW - salinity
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U2 - 10.1088/1748-9326/aae6d8
DO - 10.1088/1748-9326/aae6d8
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85056835929
SN - 1748-9318
VL - 13
JO - Environmental Research Letters
JF - Environmental Research Letters
IS - 11
M1 - 114013
ER -