Fractures as Advective Conduits at the Earth Atmosphere Interface

Understanding gas exchange between the Earth's upper crust and the atmosphere is vital and necessary because this phenomenon controls to a large extent many important processes including, the water cycle, agricultural activities, greenhouse gas emissions and more. From a hydrological aspect, water vapor transport is an extremely important process related to Earth-atmosphere gas exchange because it affects above ground water vapor concentration, soil water content and soil salinity. Traditionally, diffusion was considered the main mechanism of gas exchange between the atmosphere and vadose zone, driven by gas concentration gradients. While this assumption may be correct for many porous media, our laboratory and field-scale studies have shown that advective gas transport mechanisms are governing these fluxes in fractured rocks and cracked soils. Convection driven by thermal gradients (free convection) and wind induced (forced convection) were explored and both were found to play a major role in Earth-atmosphere gas exchange. Long-term laboratory experiments using fracture simulators in a customized climate controlled laboratory have shown that thermal convection occurs when nighttime thermal conditions prevail. This convective venting significantly enhances evaporation and subsequently salt precipitation on the fracture walls. Experiment results were used to develop an empirical relationship between temperature gradients, fracture aperture and convective gas flux through the fracture. Theoretical calculations show that thermal convection is indeed likely to play a major role in evaporation from fractures and can explain enhanced salt accumulation observed in surface-exposed fractures. Long-term field measurements, carried out continuously for 5+ years in a single fracture in the Israeli Negev Desert, verified the development of air convection cycles of 10-18 hours duration on a daily basis, with a peak in both convective flux and duration during the winter. During winter, the nighttime thermal gradient is at its yearly maximum. In addition to thermally driven convection, wind-induced convection was quantified in the laboratory and an empirical equation was developed that links wind speed, fracture aperture and resulting convection depth. Concurrent field data demonstrated the important role of wind in gas exchange through fractures under natural conditions. Overall, these multi-scale laboratory and field observations strongly suggest that fractures and cracks, crossing the Earth-atmosphere interface, need to be included in predictive models where gas transport across this critical interface is being explored and quantified.