Limitations of fibre optic distributed temperature sensing for quantifying surface water groundwater interactions

Abstract. Studies of surface water–groundwater interactions using fiber optic distributed temperature sensing (FO-DTS) has increased in recent years. However, only a few studies to date have explored the limitations of FO-DTS in detecting groundwater discharge to streams. A FO_DTS system was therefore tested in a flume under controlled laboratory conditions for its ability to accurately measure the discharge of hot or cold groundwater into a simulated surface water flow. In the experiment the surface water (SW) and groundwater (GW) velocities, expressed as ratios (v_gw/v_sw), were varied from 0.21% to 61.7%; temperature difference between SW-GW were varied from 2 to 10 °C; the direction of temperature gradient were varied with both cold and-hot water injection; and two different bed materials were used to investigate their effects on FO_DTS's detection limit of groundwater discharge. The ability of the FO_DTS system to detect the discharge of groundwater of a different temperature in the laboratory environment was found to be mainly dependent upon the surface and groundwater flow velocities and their temperature difference. A correlation was proposed to estimate the groundwater discharge from temperature. The correlation is valid when the ratio of the apparent temperature response to the source temperature difference is above 0.02.