Linking soil water balance and water age with leaching of nitrate to groundwater in an agricultural setting

The effects of land management on groundwater chemistry are often poorly understood due to uncertainties about residence times of water and solutes in the unsaturated and the saturated zones. In central Montana, a strath terrace mantled with 20-100 cm of loess-derived clay loam is composed of 5-10 meters of gravel hosting a shallow aquifer overlying shale. The landform is isolated from mountain front stream recharge and drained by springs at the gravel/shale interface surrounding the terrace. Ninety three percent of the terrace surface is cultivated, predominantly for production of small grains. A typical cropping system on the terrace is a three year rotation of winter wheat, spring wheat or barley, and fallow, where each phase represents a different regime of evapotranspiration, recharge, fertilizer application, mineralization and nitrate leaching to groundwater. Age of water in discharge from the perched aquifer in the gravel can potentially be characterized by monitoring springs and streams that are ultimately sourced by infiltration and recharge across the terrace. Work presented here couples a simple daily soil water balance model with ground and surface water chemistry to infer travel times through the unsaturated and saturated zones. These results are evaluated against estimates of groundwater age derived from pool turnover time calculations, finite difference groundwater flow modeling, and use of chemical age tracers.