Climate Change and Its Influence on the Karst Groundwater Recharge in the Jinci Spring Region, Northern China

Abstract

Due to climate change and human activities over the last fifty years, the spring flow volume of karst groundwater has sharply diminished in China. Climate change is one of the critical factors that initiates a series of karst hydrogeologic and water ecological environmental problems, because the precipitation shows a decreasing trend while the temperature shows an increasing trend. The Jinci Spring is one of the largest, most famous springs in northern China. This study employed data from the Taiyuan Meteorological Station and ten precipitation stations in and around the Jinci Spring region as well as the runoff data gathered from two hydrological monitoring stations during 1960-2012. The sliding average method and the Mann-Kendall test were used to analyze the variation tendency of precipitation, temperature, and land evaporation in this area. Finally, the following were calculated: the varying pattern of the karst groundwater recharge amount and the response of the recharge amount to precipitation, land evaporation, and river runoff by quantitative analysis. The results indicated that the precipitation and land evaporation amount decreased at first and then subsequently increased. Likewise, the variation trend of the karst groundwater recharge amount in the spring region was roughly consistent with the precipitation variation pattern. In contrast, the temperature displayed an increasing trend. The climate change resulted in a reduction of the karst groundwater recharge amount, and it had the greatest influence in the 1990s, which caused the karst groundwater recharge amount to decrease 26.75 mm as compared to that of the 1960s (about 39.68% lower than that of the 1960s). The Jinci Spring had zero flow during this period. The reduction in precipitation was one of main factors that caused the cutoff of the Jinci Spring.

Three-Dimensional Geophysical Characterization of Deeply Buried Paleokarst System in the Tahe Oilfield, Tarim Basin, China

“…The filling characteristics of these deeply buried paleocaves, including breccias, sedimentary fillings, and chemical fillings, are similar to those of the paleocaves found in outcrops [26]. The core shows that the fillings in the paleocaves are thin and interbedded, reflecting the multi-period and turbulent humid environment in which the development of the filling occurred, which is consistent with the process of frequent renovation, abandonment, and filling of cave systems in modern karst [74]. We believe that a detailed evaluation of the petrophysical characteristics of these cave fillings and a summary of their filling laws are of great significance for oil and gas exploration [75,76].…”

Seasonal and Inter-Annual Variability of Groundwater and Their Responses to Climate Change and Human Activities in Arid and Desert Areas: A Case Study in Yaoba Oasis, Northwest China

“…Wu et al [33] used the MK test to assess the trends in annual and seasonal rainfall since 1950s in Shaanxi Province of China. For details of the MK trend test we refer to Hamed [34] and Jia et al [35].…”

Dynamics of water fluxes and storages in an Alpine karst catchment under current and potential future climate conditions

“…In this context, numerical models are usually applied to describe the hydrological processes in Alpine catchments (Abbaspour et al, 2007;Achleitner et al, 2009;Benischke et al, 2010;Braun and Renner, 1992;Junghans et al, 2011;Kraller et al, 2012). Lumped models are easy to use in gauged catchments because their parameters can be effectively found via calibration.…”