Influence of Agricultural Irrigation Activity on the Potential Risk of Groundwater Pollution: A Study with Drastic Method in a Semi-Arid Agricultural Region of China

Abstract

Agricultural irrigation strongly affects groundwater pollution in cultivated areas. Groundwater vulnerability was evaluated using the DRASTIC method by considering agricultural activities that affect water infiltration and pollutant transport to the groundwater. Three scenarios, using different water recharge sources and calculation methods, were considered for the Tongliao area of northern China. For Scenario 1, only precipitation contributed to the net recharge estimation and ~33.77% of the area was under high pollution risk. For Scenarios 2 and 3, both precipitation and irrigation return water were considered for net recharge estimations. The fractional areas of high pollution risk regions were 40.60% and 19.22% for Scenarios 2 and 3, respectively. The modified infiltration coefficients for this study area were used in Scenario 3, and the fractional area of the high-risk region was 21.38% lower than for Scenario 2. The use of empirical infiltration coefficients in Scenario 2 overestimated the water infiltration ability in the cultivated areas, which also overestimated the fractional area of high-risk regions in this study. Accurate assessment of the impact of agricultural activities on the groundwater pollution risk is essential for cultivated areas. Emphasis should be placed on the calculation method of proper parameters for DRASTIC model construction.

Translating the agricultural N surplus hazard into groundwater pollution risk: Implications for effectiveness of mitigation measures in nitrate vulnerable zones

“…Thus, these models can indicate high vulnerability but no pollution hazard given the absence of a pollution load. It is the case of SINTACS (Civita and De Maio, 1997) and DRASTIC (Aller et al, 1985;Leone at al., 2009;Kazakis and Voudris, 2015;Meng et al, 2020), among others. Initially this type of models dealt only with groundwater intrinsic vulnerability, which is brought upon by the natural, hydrogeological factors of an aquifer (Vrba and Zoporozec, 1994;van Beynen et al, 2012).…”

Vulnerability to Aquifer Pollution in the Mexican Wine Producing Valley of Guadalupe, México

“…In different countries, research has validated and modified the intrinsic vulnerability methods (DRASTIC) [21]. For example, [22] assessed the vulnerability of an alluvial aquifer in a semi-arid environment in Algeria, where they determined zones from very low to very high vulnerability, mainly due to the urbanization of the area.…”

Groundwater Contamination Risk Assessment Based on Groundwater Vulnerability and Pollution Loading: A Case Study of Typical Karst Areas in China

“…In the development of economic and social construction, groundwater contamination risk assessment can effectively guide the planning and distribution of high-pollution enterprises and reduce the groundwater contamination risk [11,12]. Groundwater contamination risk assessment includes three levels: (1) the essential groundwater vulnerability, which mainly reflects the contaminate receptiveness of groundwater; (2) pollution loading; (3) and pollution status of groundwater pollution systems [13,14]. At present, there is much research on groundwater contamination risk with groundwater vulnerability as the core, but the research on the combination of groundwater vulnerability and pollution loading is still insufficient.…”