Identifying Groundwater Discharge Sources and Associated Geochemical Influences Using Resistivity Imaging and Geochemical Tracers in a Semi-Arid Estuary in South Texas

Abstract:

The Nueces Bay (NB) system has been found to be ecologically unsound due to the loss/alteration of habitat and flow regimes required by indicator species and compromised nutrient cycling and sediment loading. The management practices of freshwater inflow regimes to NB concentrates on surface water flows and does not account for groundwater inflows, though submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) has been identified as a source of freshwater and limiting nutrients that could significantly impact bay salinities and nutrient loading. To encompass the range of spatio-temporal variabilities occurring between groundwater (GW) and surface-water (SW), multiple methods, including resistivity imaging, geochemical tracers, and radioisotopes, are applied in conjunction to identify SGD sources. Preliminary continuous resistivity profile surveys identified multiple possible GW upwelling paths from which thirteen stations were chosen in NB and two stations in Nueces River (NR). A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of initial geochemical, nutrient and radioisotope data, shows that 76% of the variation in the data is explained by three factors: seasonality, freshwater inflows, and reducing environment. Significant seasonal variation is seen in average SW salinity (37psu in September 2014 to 4psu in June 2015), Ra-224 (359dpm/L in September to 636dpm/L in December), Ra-226 (268dpm/L in September to 570 dpm/L in December), ammonium (1.3μM in September to 5.5μM in April), and chlorophyll-α (3.99μg/L in December to 12.3 μg/L in April). Additionally, short-lived radioisotopes Rn-222 and Ra-224 are consistently elevated near the NR mouth, the inflow from Gum Hollow Creek, and a single station in the middle of the Bay indicating more localized, active SGD sources. However, only the stations in NR and at the NR mouth show consistently strong correlations to chlorophyll-α, phosphate, and silicate, with the river station closest to NB having the highest concentrations of nitrogen nutrients and the river station furthest from NB having the lowest. Thus there appears to be a SGD source in NR near the mouth that is contributing more nitrogen nutrients to NB than the river would alone. This study demonstrates the necessity for a multi-method approach to assessing SGD coastal embayments in the presence of SW inflows.