Water and solute transfer between a prairie wetland and adjacent uplands, 2. Chloride cycle

The quality of water in lakes and wetlands depends on the exchange of solutes with adjacent uplands. In many prairie wetlands, the input of water is dominated by snowmelt runoff and the outputis dominated by groundwater flow. We use chloride as a tracer to quantify the mass transfer processes associated with surface runoff and groundwater flow between a wetland in Saskatchewan, Canada and the surrounding upland. Snowmelt runoff transports 4–5 kg yr −1 of chloride from the upland to the wetland. Most of this chloride infiltrates under the wetland and moves laterally to the upland with shallow groundwater. Under the upland, chloride moves upward in the vadose zone with soil water, and accumulates near the surface as water is consumed by evapotranspiration. Part of this chloride mixes with snowmelt runoff and moves back to the wetland Therefore, chloride is cycled between the wetland and the upland at an approximate rate of 5 kg yr −1. The chloride cycle occurs within 5–6 m of the ground surface. A small amount of chloride escapes from the cycle with the downward flow of groundwater into the deep aquifer. The estimated flux of chloride leaving the cycle is 0.1-0.6 kg yr −1, which is of the same order of magnitude as the rate at which the catchment receives atmospheric deposition of chloride. Because the atmospheric input is reasonably well known over the prairie region, the concentration of chloride in groundwater under recharge wetlands can be used to estimate the recharge rate of deep aquifers.