Estimation of water lost by evaporation from shallow groundwater resources and Kashan Playa using isotopic data (2H and 18O)

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 School of Energy Engineering and Sustainable Resources, College of Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

2 Department of nature engineering, Faculty of natural resources & earth sciences, University of Kashan

3 Department of earth science, Technical university of Shahrood,

Abstract

Estimating the amount of evaporation from water resources is one of the important and key factors in calculating the water balance and managing water resources in each region. In order to calculate the average evaporation from water resources in Kashan plain and to check the amount of enrichment, the information of stable isotopes of water molecules was used. In this study, 42 water samples were collected from groundwater, Playa Lake and Serajeh salt pan in order to analyze the hydrogeochemical and isotopic characteristics. The amount of 18O isotopic enrichment factor was determined based on and the amount of deuterium based on . According to the results, the overall enrichment value due to evaporation, under the specified conditions and an average annual temperature of 30°C, was determined to be -16.4‰ and -82.25‰ for oxygen-18 and deuterium, respectively. Additionally, based on the Rayleigh distillation, the amount of water losses due to evaporation was calculated based on the differences between the initial sample and the 18O value of the Playa using the simplified Rayleigh equation. Since the remaining water fraction was found to be 0.40, hence the water loss rate in the northeastern part of the aquifer was estimated to be 60 percent.

Keywords

Main Subjects


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Volume 11, Issue 1
March 2024
Pages 1-14
  • Receive Date: 04 January 2024
  • Revise Date: 01 February 2024
  • Accept Date: 08 March 2024
  • First Publish Date: 20 March 2024
  • Publish Date: 20 March 2024