Tracermodel1- Excel workbook for calculation and presentation of environmental tracer data for simple groundwater mixtures: Use of chlorofluorocarbons in hydrology - a guidebook; Section III.10.3

Abstract

Atmospheric environmental tracers commonly used to date groundwater on timescales of years to decades include CFC-11, CFC-12, CFC-113, SF6, 85Kr, 3 H and 3 H/3 H0 , where 3 H0 refers to initial tritium (3 H + tritiogenic 3 He) (Cook and Herczeg, 2000). Interpretation of age from environmental tracer data may be relatively simple for a water sample with a single age, but the interpretation is more complex for a sample that is a mixture of waters of varying ages. A mixture can be a natural result of convergence of flow lines to a discharge area such as a spring or stream, or it can be an artefact of sampling a long-screen well. TRACERMODEL1 contains a worksheet that can be used to determine hypothetical concentrations of atmospheric environmental tracers in water samples with several different age distributions. It is designed to permit plotting of ages and tracer concentrations in a variety of different combinations to facilitate interpretation of measurements. TRACERMODEL1 includes several different types of graphs that are linked to the calculations. The spreadsheet and accompanying graphs can be modified for specific applications. For example, the selection of atmospheric environmental tracers can be changed to reflect analytes of interest, the input tracer data can be modified to reflect local conditions or different timescales, and the analytes of interest can include other types of non-point-source contaminants, such as nitrate (Böhlke, 2002). Previous versions of this workbook have been used to evaluate field data in studies of groundwater residence time and agricultural contamination (Böhlke and Denver, 1995; Focazio et al., 1998; Katz et al., 1999; Katz et al., 2001; Plummer et al., 2001; Böhlke and Krantz, 2003; Lindsey et al., 2003).