Université Du Québec Mémoire Présenté À L
UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC MÉMOIRE PRÉSENTÉ À L'UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À CHICOUTIMI COMME EXIGENCE PARTIELLE DE LA MAÎTRISE EN SCIENCES DE LA TERRE PAR DAPHNE SILVA PINO B.A.A. STRUCTURAL HYDROGEOLOGY IN THE KENOGAMI UPLANDS, QUEBEC, CANADA AOÛT 2012 "Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something. (...) Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going, because they were holding on to something." J. R. R. Tolkien (The Lord of the rings - The two towers) To my parents, Francisco and Marina, my sister, Ingrid, and my best friend, Vitor. For always giving me something to hold on to. Ill ABSTRACT Characterizing the joint system is a very significant component of investigations on fractured rock aquifers, as the secondary porosity controls the groundwater flow. It is also important to analyze the types of interactions between the joints, e.g., the types of termination and the dominancy of a certain joint set, since such information helps to understand the tectonic events that were responsible for the generation of the joint systems in the aquifer. Moreover, the current stress field is usually the most significant in controlling joint aperture, which plays a major role in groundwater flow. The main objective of this work is to characterize an aquifer in fractured crystalline rocks with a fairly homogeneous lithology, defining a hydrogeological model of the study area, through structural surveys at different scales and hydrogeologic data analyses. This study was carried out in the Kenogami uplands, within the Saguenay graben, Quebec. It aimed to answer the following questions: (1) is there a structured joint system in the bedrock, that is, is it possible to identify preferential joint orientations and structural domains? (2) Can joint systems be defined at different scales, e.g.
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