Abstract
The 4500m deep research borehole at Urach (South Germany) has been extensively used for hydraulic testing of the crystalline basement. The data permit a general interpretation of the hydraulic properties of crystalline continental upper crust. The typical granitic and gneissic basement contains an interconnected fluid-filled fracture system and behaves hydraulically like a confined fractured aquifer. Thus standard hydraulic well-tests can be used in the basement. The conclusions are based on data from the central part of the upper crust and are, therefore, believed to be characteristic and significant for the brittle upper continental crust in general.
The performed tests (including a > 500 hours long-term injection test) revealed a hydraulically effective porosity of the basement of typically 0.5% and an average permeability of about 10−9 m/s. NaCl-rich brine with > 100 g/kg total dissolved solids (TDS) occupies the fracture pore space at depth. The basement can be best described as a homogeneous, isotropic aquifer and this characteristic hydraulic behavior persists to at least several hundred meters around the borehole. No evidence for hydraulic infiltration or the existence of impervious boundaries was found in the test data. The homogeneity of the aquifer, together with the highly saline water present in an interconnected system of abundant fractures appear to be characteristic of continental upper crust in general. Similar general aquifer properties were found in other deep boreholes into the crystalline basement of the Black Forest area, in the “Hot-Dry-Rock” well of Soultzsous-Forêts (France), NAGRA deep wells (N-Switzerland), KTB wells (SE-Germany) and the Kola well (Kola, Russia).
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Stober, I., Bucher, K. (2000). Hydraulic Properties of the Upper Continental Crust: data from the Urach 3 geothermal well. In: Stober, I., Bucher, K. (eds) Hydrogeology of Crystalline Rocks. Water Science and Technology Library, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1816-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1816-5_3
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