In situ enrichment of ocean crust microbes on igneous minerals and glasses using an osmotic flow-through device

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 12 (2011): Q06007, doi:10.1029/2010GC003424.The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Hole 1301A on the eastern flank of Juan de Fuca Ridge was used in the first long-term deployment of microbial enrichment flow cells using osmotically driven pumps in a subseafloor borehole. Three novel osmotically driven colonization systems with unidirectional flow were deployed in the borehole and incubated for 4 years to determine the microbial colonization preferences for 12 minerals and glasses present in igneous rocks. Following recovery of the colonization systems, we measured cell density on the minerals and glasses by fluorescent staining and direct counting and found some significant differences between mineral samples. We also determined the abundance of mesophilic and thermophilic culturable organotrophs grown on marine R2A medium and identified isolates by partial 16S or 18S rDNA sequencing. We found that nine distinct phylotypes of culturable mesophilic oligotrophs were present on the minerals and glasses and that eight of the nine can reduce nitrate and oxidize iron. Fe(II)-rich olivine minerals had the highest density of total countable cells and culturable organotrophic mesophiles, as well as the only culturable organotrophic thermophiles. These results suggest that olivine (a common igneous mineral) in seawater-recharged ocean crust is capable of supporting microbial communities, that iron oxidation and nitrate reduction may be important physiological characteristics of ocean crust microbes, and that heterogeneously distributed minerals in marine igneous rocks likely influence the distribution of microbial communities in the ocean crust.The subseafloor flow cell enrichment chambers were funded by a small grant from the Ocean Drilling Program. This work was also funded by NASA grant NNX08AO22G, NSF OCE 0727119 to C.G.W., NSF OCE 0452333 to S.M.S., and OCE‐0550713 and OCE‐0727952 to A.T.F., PSU, and OSU

Impurity Transport in a Quiescent Tokamak Plasma

Short bursts of aluminum were injected into the Adiabatic Toroidal Compressor (ATC) Tokamak, and measured the time evolution of the radial distributions of highly ionized states of aluminum. The results are compared with a computer code describing neoclassical impurity diffusion and good agreement is found. (auth

Lower hybrid current drive in the PLT tokamak

Order of magnitude improvements in the level and duration of current driven by lower hybrid waves have been achieved in the PLT tokamak. Steady currents up to 175 kA have been maintained for three seconds and 400 kA for 0.3 sec by the rf power alone. The principal current carrier appears to be a high energy (approx. 100 keV) electron component, concentrated in the central 20 to 40 cm diameter core of the 80 cm PLT discharge

Use of hierarchical cluster analysis to assess the representativeness of a baseline groundwater quality monitoring network: comparison of New Zealand's national and regional groundwater monitoring programs

Baseline monitoring of groundwater quality aims to characterize the ambient condition of the resource and identify spatial or temporal trends. Sites comprising any baseline monitoring network must be selected to provide a representative perspective of groundwater quality across the aquifer(s) of interest. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) has been used as a means of assessing the representativeness of a groundwater quality monitoring network, using example datasets from New Zealand. HCA allows New Zealand's national and regional monitoring networks to be compared in terms of the number of water-quality categories identified in each network, the hydrochemistry at the centroids of these water-quality categories, the proportions of monitoring sites assigned to each water-quality category, and the range of concentrations for each analyte within each water-quality category. Through the HCA approach, the National Groundwater Monitoring Programme (117 sites) is shown to provide a highly representative perspective of groundwater quality across New Zealand, relative to the amalgamated regional monitoring networks operated by 15 different regional authorities (680 sites have sufficient data for inclusion in HCA). This methodology can be applied to evaluate the representativeness of any subset of monitoring sites taken from a larger network

Regional-scale identification of groundwater-surface water interaction using hydrochemistry and multivariate statistical methods, Wairarapa Valley, New Zealand

Identifying areas of interaction between groundwater and surface water is crucial for effective environmental management, because this interaction is known to influence water quantity and quality. This paper applies hydrochemistry and multivariate statistics to identify locations and mechanisms of groundwater-surface water interaction in the pastorally dominated Wairarapa Valley, New Zealand. Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) and Principal Components Analysis (PCA) were conducted using site-specific median values of Ca, Mg, Na, K, HCO<sub>3</sub>, Cl, SO<sub>4</sub> and electrical conductivity from 22 surface water sites and 246 groundwater sites. Surface water and groundwater monitoring sites were grouped together in three of the seven clusters identified by HCA, with the inference made that similarities in hydrochemistry indicate groundwater-surface water interaction. PCA indicated that the clusters were largely differentiated by total dissolved solids concentration, redox condition and ratio of major ions. Shallow aerobic groundwaters, located in close proximity to losing reaches of rivers, were grouped with similar Ca-HCO<sub>3</sub> type surface waters, indicating potential recharge to aquifers from these river systems. Groundwaters that displayed a rainfall-recharged chemical signature with higher Na relative to Ca, higher Cl relative to HCO<sub>3</sub> and an accumulation of NO<sub>3</sub> were grouped with neighbouring surface waters, suggesting the provision of groundwater base flow to these river systems and the transfer of this chemical signature from underlying aquifers. The hydrochemical techniques used in this study did not reveal groundwater-surface water interaction in some parts of the study area, specifically where deep anoxic groundwaters, high in total dissolved solids with a distinct Na-Cl signature, showed no apparent link to surface water. The drivers of hydrochemistry inferred from HCA and PCA are consistent with previous measurements of <sup>18</sup>O, water age and excess air. Overall, this study has shown that multivariate statistics can be used as a rapid method to identify groundwater-surface water interaction at a regional scale using existing hydrochemical datasets

Using groundwater age and hydrochemistry to understand sources and dynamics of nutrient contamination through the catchment into Lake Rotorua, New Zealand

The water quality of Lake Rotorua has steadily declined over the past 50 years despite mitigation efforts over recent decades. Delayed response of the groundwater discharges to historic land-use intensification 50 years ago was the reason suggested by early tritium measurements, which indicated large transit times through the groundwater system. We use the isotopic and chemistry signature of the groundwater for detailed understanding of the origin, fate, flow pathways, lag times and future loads of contaminants. A unique set of high-quality tritium data over more than four decades, encompassing the time when the tritium spike from nuclear weapons testing moved through the groundwater system, allows us to determine detailed age distribution parameters of the water discharging into Lake Rotorua. The Rotorua volcanic groundwater system is complicated due to the highly complex geology that has evolved through volcanic activity. Vertical and steeply inclined geological contacts preclude a simple flow model. The extent of the Lake Rotorua groundwater catchment is difficult to establish due to the deep water table in large areas, combined with inhomogeneous groundwater flow patterns. Hierarchical cluster analysis of the water chemistry parameters provided evidence of the recharge source of the large springs near the lake shore, with discharge from the Mamaku ignimbrite through lake sediment layers. Groundwater chemistry and age data show clearly the source of nutrients that cause lake eutrophication, nitrate from agricultural activities and phosphate from geologic sources. With a naturally high phosphate load reaching the lake continuously via all streams, the only effective way to limit algae blooms and improve lake water quality in such environments is by limiting the nitrate load. The groundwater in the Rotorua catchment, once it has passed through the soil zone, shows no further decrease in dissolved oxygen, indicating an absence of bioavailable electron donors along flow paths that could facilitate microbial denitrification reactions. Nitrate from land-use activities that leaches out of the root zone of agricultural land into the deeper part of the groundwater system must be expected to travel with the groundwater to the lake. The old age and the highly mixed nature of the water discharges imply a very slow and lagged response of the streams and the lake to anthropogenic contaminants in the catchment, such as nitrate. Using the age distribution as deduced from tritium time series data measured in the stream discharges into the lake allows prediction of future nutrient loads from historic land-use activities 50 years ago. For Hamurana Stream, the largest stream to Lake Rotorua, it takes more than a hundred years for the groundwater-dominated stream discharge to adjust to changes in land-use activities. About half of the currently discharging water is still pristine old water, and after this old water is completely displaced by water affected by land use, the nitrogen load of Hamurana Stream will approximately double. These timescales apply to activities that cause contamination, but also to remediation action

Calibration of a transient transport model to tritium data in streams and simulation of groundwater ages in the western Lake Taupo catchment, New Zealand

Here we present a general approach of calibrating transient transport models to tritium concentrations in river waters developed for the MT3DMS/MODFLOW model of the western Lake Taupo catchment, New Zealand. Tritium has a known pulse-shaped input to groundwater systems due to the bomb tritium in the early 1960s and, with its radioactive half-life of 12.32 yr, allows for the determination of the groundwater age. In the transport model, the tritium input (measured in rainfall) passes through the groundwater system, and the simulated tritium concentrations are matched to the measured tritium concentrations in the river and stream outlets for the Waihaha, Whanganui, Whareroa, Kuratau and Omori catchments from 2000–2007. For the Kuratau River, tritium was also measured between 1960 and 1970, which allowed us to fine-tune the transport model for the simulated bomb-peak tritium concentrations. In order to incorporate small surface water features in detail, an 80 m uniform grid cell size was selected in the steady-state MODFLOW model for the model area of 1072 km². The groundwater flow model was first calibrated to groundwater levels and stream baseflow observations. Then, the transient tritium transport MT3DMS model was matched to the measured tritium concentrations in streams and rivers, which are the natural discharge of the groundwater system. The tritium concentrations in the rivers and streams correspond to the residence time of the water in the groundwater system (groundwater age) and mixing of water with different age. The transport model output showed a good agreement with the measured tritium values. Finally, the tritium-calibrated MT3DMS model is applied to simulate groundwater ages, which are used to obtain groundwater age distributions with mean residence times (MRTs) in streams and rivers for the five catchments. The effect of regional and local hydrogeology on the simulated groundwater ages is investigated by demonstrating groundwater ages at five model cross-sections to better understand MRTs simulated with tritium-calibrated MT3DMS and lumped parameter models