Regional Transport of Heat by Groundwater: Implications of Climate Change
Thursday, September 8, 2016: 3:30 p.m.
Erick Burns
,
Oregon Water Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Portland, OR
Changes in groundwater temperature resulting from climate-driven boundary conditions can be evaluated using new analytic solutions of the groundwater heat transport equation. These steady-state solutions account for land-surface boundary conditions, hydrology, and geothermal heating, and can be used to identify the key physical processes that control thermal responses of groundwater-fed ecosystems to climate change; in particular: (1) groundwater recharge rate and recharge temperature and (2) vadose heat conduction controlled by land surface temperature and vadose zone properties. In addition to the steady-state solutions, transient solutions of thermal response are used to estimate how long it takes for new thermal signals to arrive at groundwater-dependent ecosystems. The Medicine Lake Highlands, California, USA, and associated springs complexes are used to demonstrate the methods, providing quantitative estimates of the magnitude and timing of spring temperature changes as a function of position within the hydrologic system.
Erick Burns, Oregon Water Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Portland, OR
Erick Burns has a diverse professional background, including house painter, sailor, bartender, nuclear power plant operator, teacher, barrista, and hydrogeologist. In 1992, he returned to early interests in geology and the natural world that arose from growing up in the desert. He obtained a Geology degree from Northern Arizona University in 1994 followed by a M.S. degree in Hydrologic Sciences from the University of Nevada – Reno in 1996, and a M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics and a PhD in Bioresource Engineering from Oregon State University in 2004. His research interests are diverse, including: study of coupled groundwater and heat flow, regional groundwater flow modeling, the use of geostatistical methods to understand trends and predictive uncertainty, the use of imperfect data to reduce uncertainty in water resource management, and the use of process thermodynamics to understand non-ideal behavior of fluids in soils. During his 15 years as a practicing hydrogeologist, Erick has worked as a consultant, a regulator, a university researcher and educator, and since 2006, he has served as a project hydrogeologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, conducting groundwater and heat flow studies across a variety of scales and terrains.
