Two-million-year record of deuterium depletion in great basin ground waters

Fluid inclusions in uranium series-dated calcitic veins from the southern Great Basin record a reduction of 40 per mil in the deuterium content of ground-water recharge during the Pleistocene. This variation is tentatively attributed to major uplift of the Sierra Nevada Range and the Transverse Ranges during this epoch with attendant increasing orographic depletion of deuterium from inland-bound Pacific storms.

Analysis of CO2 leakage through ‘low-permeability’ faults from natural reservoirs in the Colorado Plateau, east-central Utah

The numerous CO2 reservoirs in the Colorado Plateau region of the United States are natural analogues for potential geological CO2 sequestration repositories. To understand better the risk of leakage from reservoirs used for long-term underground CO2 storage, we examine evidence for CO2 migration along two normal faults that cut a reservoir in east-central Utah. CO2-charged springs, geysers, and a hydrocarbon seep are localized along these faults. These include natural springs that have been active for long periods of time, and springs that were induced by recent drilling. The CO2-charged spring waters have deposited travertine mounds and carbonate veins. The faults cut siltstones, shales, and sandstones and the fault rocks are fine-grained, clay-rich gouge, generally thought to be barriers to fluid flow. The geological and geochemical data are consistent with these faults being conduits for CO2 moving to the surface. Consequently, the injection of CO2 into faulted geological reservoirs, including faults with clay gouge, must be carefully designed and monitored to avoid slow seepage or fast rupture to the biosphere.

Continuous 500,000-Year Climate Record from Vein Calcite in Devils Hole, Nevada

Oxygen-18 (delta(18)O) variations in a 36-centimeter-long core (DH-11) of vein calcite from Devils Hole, Nevada, yield an uninterrupted 500,000-year paleotemperature record that closely mimics all major features in the Vostok (Antarctica) paleotemperature and marine delta(18)O ice-volume records. The chronology for this continental record is based on 21 replicated mass-spectrometric uranium-series dates. Between the middle and latest Pleistocene, the duration of the last four glacial cycles recorded in the calcite increased from 80,000 to 130,000 years; this variation suggests that major climate changes were aperiodic. The timing of specific climatic events indicates that orbitally controlled variations in solar insolation were not a major factor in triggering deglaciations. Interglacial climates lasted about 20,000 years. Collectively, these observations are inconsistent with the Milankovitch hypothesis for the origin of the Pleistocene glacial cycles but they are consistent with the thesis that these cycles originated from internal nonlinear feedbacks within the atmosphere-ice sheet-ocean system.