TY - JOUR
T1 - Groundwater recharge in desert playas
T2 - Current rates and future effects of climate change
AU - McKenna, Owen P.
AU - Sala, Osvaldo
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Laureano Gherardi, Josh Haussler, and Kelsey McGurrin for field and lab support. Thanks to Sharon Hall, Curtis Monger, and Dan Childers for invaluable input and contributions to this manuscript. Jornada basin LTER project provided soil data sets. US National Science Foundation (Grant DEB-1235828) and Arizona State University, Global Drylands Center and School of Life Sciences provided funding for this work. We would also like to thank the Jornada LTER and JER USDA personnel, especially Debra Peters, Kris Havstad, Brandon Bestelmeyer, David Thatcher, Joe Ramirez, and John Anderson for their incredible support. Special thanks to Natalie McKenna for her help with editing this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2018/1
Y1 - 2018/1
N2 - Our results from playas, which are topographic low areas situated in closed-catchments in drylands, indicated that projected climate change in Southwestern USA would have a net positive impact over runon and groundwater recharge beneath playas. Expected increased precipitation variability can cause up to a 300% increase in annual groundwater recharge beneath playas. This increase will overshadow the effect of decreased precipitation amount that could cause up to a 50% decrease in recharge beneath playas. These changes could have a significant impact on groundwater and carbon storage. These results are important given that groundwater resources in Southwestern USA continue to decline due to human consumption outpacing natural recharge of aquifers. Here, we report on groundwater recharge rates ranging from less than 1 mm to greater than 25 mm per year beneath desert playas. Playas located in larger and steeper catchments with finer-textured soils had the highest rates of recharge. Vegetation cover had no effect on recharge beneath playas. We modeled catchment runoff generation and found that the amount of runon a playa receives annually strongly correlated to the rate of groundwater recharge beneath that playa. Runon occurred during precipitation events larger than 20 mm and increased linearly with events above that threshold.
AB - Our results from playas, which are topographic low areas situated in closed-catchments in drylands, indicated that projected climate change in Southwestern USA would have a net positive impact over runon and groundwater recharge beneath playas. Expected increased precipitation variability can cause up to a 300% increase in annual groundwater recharge beneath playas. This increase will overshadow the effect of decreased precipitation amount that could cause up to a 50% decrease in recharge beneath playas. These changes could have a significant impact on groundwater and carbon storage. These results are important given that groundwater resources in Southwestern USA continue to decline due to human consumption outpacing natural recharge of aquifers. Here, we report on groundwater recharge rates ranging from less than 1 mm to greater than 25 mm per year beneath desert playas. Playas located in larger and steeper catchments with finer-textured soils had the highest rates of recharge. Vegetation cover had no effect on recharge beneath playas. We modeled catchment runoff generation and found that the amount of runon a playa receives annually strongly correlated to the rate of groundwater recharge beneath that playa. Runon occurred during precipitation events larger than 20 mm and increased linearly with events above that threshold.
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U2 - 10.1088/1748-9326/aa9eb6
DO - 10.1088/1748-9326/aa9eb6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85041110744
SN - 1748-9318
VL - 13
JO - Environmental Research Letters
JF - Environmental Research Letters
IS - 1
M1 - 014025
ER -