The Watering Hole

Congratulations to David Boutt, Professor of Hydrogeology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and his co-authors at Amherst and University of Alaska for the groundbreaking study recently published in the journal Earth’s Future about the sustainability of water extraction associated with lithium mining in the Salar de Atacama, Chile where almost half the world's supply of lithium exists. The paper, Relic Groundwater and Prolonged Drought Confound Interpretations of Water Sustainability and Lithium Extraction in Arid Lands, provides an overview of the eco-region and lithium mining practice. The study uses a combination of satellite and ground-based hydro-climatological data to measure how water moves through the system and reveals that much of the water in the system is 60+ years old, meaning that this old water has been moving very slowly through the region for decades and can not easily be replaced by short term precipitation events.

While Chile and lithium mining may seem far distant from Plymouth, Ma. and from the Town's MVP funded investigation into Subterranean Resiliency: Predicting, Assessing and Mitigating Saltwater Intrusion, Dr. Boutt's effort to develop a new groundwater flow model for the coastal region resonates with his long-term study in Chile. The underlying processes of how rainfall infiltrates into aquifers (like that underneath SE Mass.) are widely transferable. The slow response of aquifer systems to changes in climate or sea-level rise can have can have effects that are delayed for decades to centuries. Understanding the timescales of aquifer system response and the rate of water infiltration into the subsurface is one the key aspects of the analysis that Dr. Boutt is undertaking in Plymouth. Using advanced numerical simulations of aquifer behavior we can plan for changes in groundwater flow and surface hydrologic change due to rising sea levels.