Travel times of water

Many streams respond promptly to rainstorms, even though storm runoff often contains relatively little water that originates from current rainfall. Typical aquifers feeding these streams consist mostly of water that is decades to millennia in age. In contrast, significant fractions of typical river flows are less than approximately three months old, indicating that river waters are generally much younger than the aquifers that feed them. Understanding the juxtaposition of old and young waters is key to understanding hydrological processes, biogeochemical cycles, contaminant transport, and chemical weathering. We use field observations, simple mathematical models, and novel analyses of tracer data to unravel how water travels through the environment.

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