Using tritium and 222Rn to estimate groundwater discharge and thawing permafrost contributing to surface water in permafrost regions on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Wan, Chengwei; Li, Kai; Shen, Sichen; Gibson, J. J.; Ji, Kaifang; Yi, Peng; Yu, Zhongbo

doi:10.1007/s10967-019-06720-5

Cited by 18 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…3). This "falling-rising" feature was also noted in earlier studies of alpine basins [38,41], and we discovered that this feature is highly variable in spatiotemporal. Unlike the rapid response of freezing to soil temperature change, the response of thawing to soil temperature change is a slow process [42], and there is a time delay between the process of soil temperature and GWT increase [12].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…Several studies have reported that extreme climate events have exerted strong effects on permafrost environments [34][35], continuous permafrost is degrading to discontinuous permafrost, and discontinuous permafrost will degrade to seasonal frost [5,36]. Permafrost degradation leads to changes in groundwater, and groundwater changes further contribute to permafrost degradation [37][38].…”

Section: Hydrogeological Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Distribution Characteristics of Groundwater Table in the Nagqu River Basin, Central Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Xia¹,

Weng²,

Gong³

et al. 2023

Pol. J. Environ. Stud.

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Alpine regions' groundwater is crucial to the worldwide hydrological cycle. However, due to the harsh environmental conditions, the distribution and evolution characteristics await clarification.The study area was selected to be the Nagqu River Basin in the Nu-Salween River's source region. In 2019-2021, we gathered 88,000 monitoring data from nine observation wells and examined the spatiotemporal groundwater table changes in various permafrost zones and freeze-thaw cycles. During the freezing period, entirely frozen period, thawing period, and entirely thawed period, the groundwater table change rates in the permafrost zone were 2.14, 1.54, 1.55, and 2.01 times larger than in the seasonal frost zone, and fluctuation amplitudes were 1.97, 1.28, 1.01 and 1.31 times larger. The average groundwater table change rate and fluctuation amplitude were greatest during the entirely thawed period and lowest during the thawing period, with the maximum change rate reaching 3.64 cm/d during the entirely thawed period of 2019-2020 in the permafrost zone and the minimum change rate of 0.12 cm/d during the thawing period of 2019-2020 in the seasonal frost zone.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Hydrogeological Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distribution Characteristics of Groundwater Table in the Nagqu River Basin, Central Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Xia¹,

Weng²,

Gong³

et al. 2023

Pol. J. Environ. Stud.

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“…For a more objective reflection of the spatial and temporal distributions of natural tritium in precipitation (also called rain tritium), the concentrations of rain tritium reported in areas without nuclear facilities in China [28,36,37,41,42,45,48,49,[57][58][59][60][61][62], Japan [28,35,39,51,52,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70] and South Korea [28,[71][72][73][74][75][76][77] in the past three decades were extracted and plotted against the latitude in Fig. 2.…”

Section: Tritium Levels In Precipitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Levels and behavior of environmental tritium in East Asia

Feng

Zhuo

2022

NUCL SCI TECH

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For a more systematic understanding of the levels of environmental tritium and its behavior in East Asia, a database on environmental tritium was established based on the literature published in the past 30 years. Subsequently, the levels and behavior of the environmental tritium were further studied by statistical analyses. The results indicate that the distribution of environmental tritium is inhomogeneous and complex. In areas without nuclear facilities, the level of environmental tritium has decreased to its background level, even though a certain number of atmospheric nuclear tests were performed before 1980. In general, the level of atmospheric tritium was marginally higher than the levels in precipitation and surface water; the levels in shallow groundwater and seawater were considerably lower. Furthermore, the levels of tritium in the atmosphere, precipitation, and inland surface water were strongly correlated with latitude and distance from the coastline. In soil and living organisms, the level of tissue-free water tritium (TFWT) was comparable to the tritium levels in local rainfall, whereas the persistence of organically bound tritium (OBT) in the majority of organisms resulted in an OBT/TFWT ratio greater than one. Conversely, extremely high levels of environmental tritium were observed near certain nuclear power plants and the Fukushima accident sites. These results highlight the requirement to know the tritium baseline level and its behavior in the environment beforehand to better assess the impact of tritium discharge. Further investigations of environmental tritium in East Asia using more efficient and adequate monitoring methods are also required.

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“…In recent decades, climate warming and permafrost degradation have had a significant impact on alpine groundwater flow systems and ecosystems (Frey and Mcclelland 2010; Cochand et al 2019). The degradation of permafrost will increase the thickness of the active layer, which will lead to changes in groundwater dynamics and recharge‐discharge structures, further affecting the surface water‐groundwater cycle system (Wan et al 2019). In addition, the degradation of permafrost will increase the weathering rate of mineral soils, bedrock, and permafrost, resulting in a significant increase of the relatively conserved ions such as Ca, Mg, and Na in surface water‐groundwater and altering the groundwater hydrochemical characteristics (Keller et al 2010; Toohey et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of Hydrogeochemistry and Isotopes for Evaluation of Groundwater in Qilian Coal Base of China

Zhao,

Li,

Wang

et al. 2023

Groundwater

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The Jiangcang Basin is an important mining area of the former Qilian Mountain large coal base in Qinghai Province, and understanding the groundwater circulation mechanism is the basis for studying the hydrological effects of permafrost degradation in alpine regions. In this study, hydrogeochemical and multiple isotope tracer analysis methods are used to understand the chemical evolution and circulation mechanisms of the groundwater in the typical alpine region of the Jiangcang Basin. The diversity of the groundwater hydrochemistry in the study area reflects the complexity of the hydrogeochemical environment in which it is located. The suprapermafrost water and intrapermafrost water are recharged by modern meteoric water. The groundwater is closely hydraulically connected to the surface water with weak evaporation overall. The high δ34S value of deep groundwater is due to SO4 reduction, and SO42−‐rich snow recharge with lixiviated sulfate minerals are the main controlling factor for the high SO42− concentration in groundwater. According to the multivariate water conversion relationships, it reveals that the river receives more groundwater recharge, suprapermafrost water is recharged by the proportion of meteoric water, which is closely related to the mountainous area at the edge of the basin, while intrapermafrost water is mainly recharged by the shallow groundwater. This study provides a data‐driven approach to understanding groundwater recharge and evolution in alpine regions, in addition to having significant implications for water resource management and ecological environmental protection in coal bases of the Tibetan Plateau.

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Using tritium and 222Rn to estimate groundwater discharge and thawing permafrost contributing to surface water in permafrost regions on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Cited by 18 publications

References 47 publications

Distribution Characteristics of Groundwater Table in the Nagqu River Basin, Central Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Distribution Characteristics of Groundwater Table in the Nagqu River Basin, Central Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Levels and behavior of environmental tritium in East Asia

Use of Hydrogeochemistry and Isotopes for Evaluation of Groundwater in Qilian Coal Base of China

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