New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

It has been known for many years that subsurface temperatures can be affected by both climatic change and groundwater movement. Over the past several decades efforts have been made to use subsurface temperatures to estimate vertical or horizontal specific discharge components as well as climatic changes. The effects of surface temperature changes in the Albuquerque Basin are not evident in temperature data from the vadose zone to depths of about 100 m. It therefore appears that disturbances noticed in temperature data below the water table within the area probably result from groundwater flow. In the past five or six years new solutions have been developed to estimate both vertical and horizontal components of specific discharge from accurate subsurface temperature measurements. The resulting expressions can be fitted to temperature or temperature gradient data to yield coefficients from which the horizontal and vertical components of groundwater flow can be calculated. However, in many instances the fitting procedure must be restrained in order to provide flow directions consistent with piezometric information. In some instances expressions relevant to vertical only flow or horizontal only flow provide better statistical fits to the temperature data than do the expressions incorporating both horizontal and vertical flow; in such cases one might suggest that the flow is dominated by single component flow. Vertical and horizontal components of hydraulic conductivity can also be estimated from specific discharge calculations if sufficient piezometric data are available. Temperature data from two sites in the Albuquerque Basin show the differences present between sites having significantly different groundwater flow characteristics.