Impacts of land use changes on groundwater resources in the Heihe River Basin

doi:10.1360/gs050403

Abstract

Abstract:

Land use and land cover changes have a great impact on the regional hydrological process. Based on three periods of remote sensing data from the 1960s and the long-term observed data of groundwater from the 1980s, the impacts of land use changes on the groundwater system in the middle reach of Heihe River Basin in recent three decades are analyzed by the perspective of groundwater recharge and discharge system. The results indicate that with the different intensities of land use changes, the impacts on the groundwater recharge were 2.602×10⁸ m3/a in the former 15 years (1969-1985) and 0.218×10⁸ m3/a in the latter 15 years (1986-2000), and the impacts on the groundwater discharge were 2.035×10⁸ m3/a and 4.91×10⁸ m3/a respectively. When the groundwater exploitation was in a reasonable range less than 3.0×10⁸ m3/a, the land use changes could control the changes of regional groundwater resources. Influenced by the land use changes and the large-scale exploitation in the recent decade, the groundwater resources present apparently regional differences in Zhangye region. Realizing the impact of land use changes on groundwater system and the characteristics of spatial-temporal variations of regional groundwater resources would be very important for reasonably utilizing and managing water and soil resources.

Key words: land use change, inland river, groundwater system, Heihe River Basin

WANG Genxu, YANG Lingyuan, CHEN Ling, Jumpei Kubota. Impacts of land use changes on groundwater resources in the Heihe River Basin[J].Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2005, 15(4): 405-414.

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