TITLE:
Isotope and REE Characterization of Groundwater Aquifers within the Aquifer Storage and Recovery Programme in Sukhothai (N.-Thailand)
AUTHORS:
Manussawee Hengsuwan, Monthon Yongprawat, Klaus Simon, Bent T. Hansen
KEYWORDS:
Sr-Isotope, Rare Earth Elements (REE), Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR), Thailand
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Water Resource and Protection,
Vol.8 No.6,
May
30,
2016
ABSTRACT: Aquifer
Storage and Recovery (ASR) was a pilot project for solving flood and drought
problem in the northern part of Chao Phraya River basin, Thailand. This part of
Thailand always faces flooding in rainy season and drought during dry season
every year. The overexploitation of groundwater during dry season leads to
continuously decline of water level in this area. In this project, the
excessive surface water during rainy season was stored by injection of this
treated surface water through recharge wells into the underground aquifers.
This would serve to raise the water level, which can be extracted for use
during the dry season. To assess the efficiency of the ASR process some tracers
are required. The aim of this study is to prove the suitability of natural
tracers to follow up the artificial recharge process; emphasis will be placed
on Strontium (Sr) isotopic composition. The results showed that the change in 87Sr/86Sr
ratios could be observed during an artificial recharge due to the different
isotopic fingerprint of surface water and groundwater. However, the flow
direction of the injected water cannot be clearly interpreted because of the
limited number of monitoring wells, small distance between each monitoring well
and the short duration of injection.