263-5 Anthropogenic Impact on the Groundwater Resources of the Kermit Dune Field, West Texas, USA.

Session: Exploring Groundwater Recharge and Management: Managed Aquifer Recharge and Other Innovative Tools for Water Supply Development and Operations (Posters)

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Water security is a major challenge for arid to semi-arid ecoregions such as the northern Chihuahua Desert and broadly for the Southern High Plains, USA due to decreasing precipitation and increasing temperatures since 1979. Consistent water resources lie within the regional Pecos Valley Aquifer (PVA), with an average saturated thickness of ~130 m in the Monument Draw Trough and recharge estimated at 0.08 km³ annually. The contribution of the Kermit dunal aquifer (KDA) was estimated between 4.4 and 9% of the PVA’s annual recharge, from precipitation and evapotranspiration compared to WLD, the average water level decline in the monitoring wells, for 2023 and 2022. The KDA hosts ~0.1 km³ of water recharged from precipitation and discharged through evapotranspiration, with nearly balanced respective rates of 300 mm/yr and 350 mm/yr under natural conditions. However, since the 1980s the hydrologic balance has shifted negatively due to intensified drought conditions and, since 2016, proppant mining for oil and gas production in the Permian Basin, west Texas. Mining activities resulted in the formation of a dredge reservoir, 3 to 8 m deep, with evaporation rates of ~ 1600 mm/yr. Moreover, a 1.2 m drawdown across the dunes and modified hydraulic gradients aligned with the dredge ponds and mine pumps suggest that mining operations are reshaping groundwater flow paths, accelerating aquifer depletion and effectively diverting water away from the PVA. A water balance including pumping and evaporation highlighted a new minimal cross-sectional discharge from the KDA amounting to 0.24 % of the annual recharge in the PVA, over a magnitude lower than the previous estimate. Also, 30.7 % of discharge from the KDA may represent groundwater pumping by the sand mining operations. These results emphasize the vulnerability of the Kermit dunal aquifer system and other dunal aquifer systems to anthropogenic proppant mining activities and associated land use changes and raise concerns about long-term aquifer sustainability in this semi-arid environment.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

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