László PALCSU1, Gabriella KOLTAI1,2, Anikó HORVÁTH1, Ireneusz BARAN3, Anna BARAN3,4 & Stanisław HAŁAS4
1Institute for Nuclear Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Bem tér 18/C, 4026 Debrecen, Hungary
palcsu.laszlo@atomki.mta.hu, horvath.aniko@atomki.mta.hu,
2University of Innsbruck, Innrain 52, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria gabriella.koltai@uibk.ac.at
3The Bronisław Markiewicz State Higher School of Technology and Economics in Jarosław, 37-500 Jaroslaw, Poland
annabaran1212@o2.pl, ireneuszbaran@o2.pl
4Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, 20-031 Lublin, Poland stanislaw.halas@poczta.umcs.lublin.pl

STABLE ISOTOPE AND NOBLE GAS CONSTRAINS ON THE GENESIS OF THERAPEUTIC WATERS IN SOUTHEAST POLAND

Full text

Noble gas and stable isotope analyses can provide useful information on the origin of groundwater including residence time of different mixed components. This paper focuses on two unique therapeutic water areas of Southeast Poland (Horyniec Spa and Iwonicz Spa Lubatowka Spa). Groundwater from the well Róża-III in the Horyniec Spa is of purely meteoric origin and seems to be recharged in the Middle Holocene. The calculated recharge temperature based on dissolved noble gas concentration has been obtained to be 7.6±0.6 °C, which corresponds to recent mean annual air temperature. Stable isotope composition of Lubatówka and Iwonicz Spa waters demonstrate a high contribution of formation water enriched in heavy isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen. Water samples from Lubatówka are characterized by high helium concentration, (1-6)·10^-6 ccSTP/g, exceeding 25-150 times concentrations observed in surface water The low ³He/⁴He ratios indicate crustal origin. Substantially low noble gas concentrations (Ne to Xe) were found in the water samples from Iwonicz Spa. Subsurface degassing might have happened in the Lubatówka aquifer due to the presence of large methane gas fields. The elemental and stable isotope composition of the waters points out that one of the end members in the mixing pattern is a formation water, i.e. the evaporated ancient ocean water of the Paratethys from the early Cenozoic Era. These waters and maybe to a certain extent waters from Lubatówka are mixtures of freshly recharged meteoric water and formation water, although the presence of the third component cannot be excluded. The mean residence time of the freshwater component present in therapeutic waters of Iwonicz region has been estimated to be up to 1-2 decades.