Using multiple environmental methods to estimate groundwater discharge into an arid lake (Dakebo Lake, Inner Mongolia, China)

Abstract

It is important to have both a qualitative and quantitative understanding of the hydraulic exchange between groundwater and surface water to support the development of effective management plans for sustainable use of water resources. Groundwater is a major source of surface-water recharge and plays an important role in maintaining the integrity of ecosystems, especially within wetlands in semi-arid regions. The Ordos Desert Plateau of Inner Mongolia (China) is a vulnerable ecosystem that suffers from an extreme lack of water. The hydraulic exchange between groundwater and lake water in Dakebo Lake (the largest of hundreds of lakes on the Ordos Desert Plateau) was evaluated using multiple environmental methods. Continuous monitoring of the groundwater and lake-water levels indicated that the lake was recharged vertically by groundwater. Application of hydrodynamic and temperature tracing methods to the western side of the lake indicated that the rate of groundwater discharge to the lake was about 2 × 10 −6 to 3 × 10 −6 m/s in spring, summer, and autumn, but that there was no recharge in winter because the hypolentic zone (HZ) was frozen. Mixing ratios of groundwater and lake water in the HZ, estimated from the 18 O and 2 H ratios, showed that there were spatial variations in the hydrodynamic exchange between groundwater and lake water within the HZ.

Groundwater origin, flow regime and geochemical evolution in arid endorheic watersheds: a case study from the Qaidam Basin, northwestern China

“…Numerical simulation of groundwater flow is an essential tool to synthesize hydrogeological information and reveal groundwater flow patterns (Bredehoeft and Konikow, 2012;Anderson et al, 2015;Tóth et al, 2016). The combination of these approaches is robust to reveal groundwater origin, flow regimes, renewability, hydrochemical evolution and interaquifer mixing, as well as surface water and groundwater interactions, etc., in basins with complex hydrogeology or sparse monitoring data, and has been successfully applied in many basins such as the Great Artesian Basin and Murray Basin in Australia, Michigan Basin in US, Minqin Basin and Ordos Plateau in China, Stampriet Basin in Africa (Edmunds et al, 2006;Banks et al, 2010;Love et al, 2013Love et al, , 2017Stone and Edmunds, 2014;Su et al, 2016;Cartwright and Morgenstern, 2017;Petts et al, 2017;Priestley et al, 2017b).…”

Recharge and drainage of lakes in the Powidzki Landscape Park in conditions of increased anthropogenic and environmental pressure (central-western Poland)

“…These works show a sig nif i cantly more com plex char acter of hy drau lic con nec tions of lakes with the sur round ing ground wa ter. Sim i lar trends are ob served in the global lit er a ture (Brock et al, 1982;Cheng and An der son, 1993;Sacks et al, 1998;Shaw et al, 2013;Rautio and Korkka-Niemi, 2015;Rudnicki et al, 2015;Su et al, 2016).…”

Interactions of artificial lakes with groundwater applying an integrated MODFLOW solution

“…The simplest and most direct way of studying a lake interaction with groundwater, is by investigating exchange of seepage between that lake water and groundwater by point field measurements using methods such as seepage meters, thermic profiling, dye tracing, piezometers and potentio-manometers (Lee 1977;Ong and Zlotnik 2011;Otz et al 2003;Winter et al 1988) or a combination of methods (Anibas et al 2009;Owor et al 2011;Su et al 2016). However, such methods are vulnerable to heterogeneity and therefore difficult for spatial integration.…”