Long-term monitoring of the temperature profile in a deep borehole: Temperature variations associated with water injection experiments and natural groundwater discharge

Long-term temperature monitoring was carried out in a borehole drilled for investigation of the Nojima fault, an active fault in SW Japan, using the distributed optical fiber temperature sensing (DTS) technique. Temperatures in the borehole had been measured every 1 m along an optical fiber cable with a resolution of about 0.1 K over a period of 6 years. Water injection experiments were conducted in this borehole in 1997, 2000 and 2003. Monitoring of the temperature profile was started after the first injection experiment, and the temperature profile remained very stable until the start of the second injection experiment. During the second and third experiments, the temperatures in the borehole dropped due to cooling by the injected water but no appreciable temperature change was observed below about 580 m. It clearly shows that the water leaked out of the hole around this point and the leaking depth is estimated to be about 540 m based on the shape of the temperature profile. After the injection was stopped, the recovery of the temperature to the undisturbed profile was exceptionally slow around the leaking point, resulting in a local temperature anomaly, probably because the water leaking out of the hole had cooled the surrounding formations extensively. A very similar temperature anomaly was observed at the beginning of temperature monitoring, which suggests that water leaked out at the same depth in the first injection experiment as well. Between the second and third injection experiments, the top of the borehole was kept open to allow groundwater discharge for about 1 month in 2000 and 2003. In both periods, groundwater flowed out continuously and the shapes of the observed temperature profiles indicate that the groundwater entered in the hole at the same depth as the leaking point during the injection experiments. The temperature records also show that the rate of discharge had been nearly constant through the two test periods. The water discharge appears to have been little affected by the water injection. These results demonstrate that the optical fiber temperature monitoring system is a very effective tool for hydrological experiments.