Abstract Archives of past climates and environments are essential for understanding Earth history and provide a baseline for studying the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Because groundwater in large basins typically has residence times of thousands to tens-of-thousands of years, it potentially records changes to the hydrosphere over the transition from the last glacial maximum. However, the resolution of the palaeoenvironment information preserved in groundwater is limited by groundwater not having a distinct age. Even with simple aquifer geometries, uniform hydraulic properties, and no cross-formational flow, variations in flow path lengths and dispersion results in groundwater containing individual water aliquots that have residence time distributions of hundreds to thousands of years. Groundwater in regional aquifers will potentially record longer-term (tens of millennia) environmental changes, such as the transition between the last glacial maximum and the current climate that occurred between approximately 17 and 11 ka. Evidence for shorter timescale (decades to centuries) environmental changes may also be preserved in younger (

中文翻译：

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地下水作为过去环境地球化学档案的潜力

摘要 过去气候和环境的档案对于了解地球历史至关重要，并为研究人为气候变化的影响提供基线。由于大型盆地中的地下水通常具有数千到数万年的停留时间，因此它可能会记录从最后一次冰期最大值过渡期间水圈的变化。然而，地下水中保存的古环境信息的分辨率受到没有明显年龄的地下水的限制。即使具有简单的含水层几何形状、均匀的水力特性和无交叉地层流动，流动路径长度和分散的变化也会导致地下水中含有单独的水等分试样，这些水等分试样的停留时间分布为数百至数千年。区域含水层中的地下水可能会记录更长期（数千年）的环境变化，例如上次冰期最大值与大约 17 至 11 ka 之间发生的当前气候之间的过渡。更短的时间尺度（几十年到几百年）环境变化的证据也可能在更年轻的（