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Hydrology Commons

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Natural Resources and Conservation

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Masters Theses

Heat flow

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Full-Text Articles in Hydrology

Heat Flow In The Southern Margin Of Salar De Atacama: Deep Groundwater Temperature Distributions And The Implications For Subsurface Flow And Land Surface Energy Budgets, Graham Thomas Nov 2023

Heat Flow In The Southern Margin Of Salar De Atacama: Deep Groundwater Temperature Distributions And The Implications For Subsurface Flow And Land Surface Energy Budgets, Graham Thomas

Masters Theses

Salar de Atacama (SdA) located in Northern Chile is home to one of the planet’s largest salar systems and lithium resources. Managing groundwater resources in salars is not obvious due to the lack of scientific understanding on the connectivity between the freshwater and brine systems. Using heat as a tracer in SdA provides a cost-effective method to further investigate groundwater flow in salars. This study employs 372 temperature-depth profiles from 90 boreholes between 2013-18 to understand the distinct thermal zones and flow between them in SdA. Three thermal zones exist within the southern margin of SdA’s thermal regime, at higher …