Power-law residence time distribution in the hyporheic zone of a 2nd-order mountain stream

[1] We measured the hyporheic residence time distribution in a 2nd-order mountain stream at the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Oregon, and found it to be a power-law over at least 1.5 orders of magnitude in time (1.5 hr to 3.5 d). The residence time distribution has a very long tail which scales as t , and is poorly characterized by an exponential model. Because of the small power-law exponent, efforts to characterize the mean hyporheic residence time (ts) in this system result in estimates that are scale invariant, increasing with the characteristic advection time within the stream channel (tad). The distribution implies the hyporheic zone has a very large range of exchange timescales, with significant quantities of water and solutes stored over timescales very much longer than tad. The hyporheic zone in such streams may contribute to short-time fractal scaling in time series of solute concentrations observed in small-watershed studies.