Spatiotemporal characteristics of hydrochemistry in Asian arid inland basin–a case study of Shiyang River Basin

Abstract

Inland rivers play a key role in supplying water for domestic and agricultural purposes in Asian arid inland basin. This paper investigates the chemical composition of precipitation, river water, and groundwater, providing evidence for the influencing factors the water composition in the Shiyang River Basin. Water samples were collected and analyzed to determine the content of major cations (Ca, Mg, Na, K, and NH+ 4) and anions (HCO- 3, Cl, NO- 3, NO- 2, F, and SO2-4), total solid solubility, and pH values. The results showed that precipitation, surface water, and groundwater were mildly alkaline. Ca and SO2-4 were the predominant ions. The content of inorganic ions varied largely in the different seasons, with the highest ion concentration observed in spring and the lowest in summer. The seasonal variations in groundwater were less considerable than those in surface water. Furthermore, anion concentrations increased substantially from upstream to downstream. Regional weathering of carbonates and evaporation were established as the major sources of these ions. In addition, we discovered that anthropogenic inputs had led to light pollution of water in some residential districts.

Effects of Ecological Water Conveyance on the Hydrochemistry of a Terminal Lake in an Inland River: A Case Study of Qingtu Lake in the Shiyang River Basin

“…Therefore, the hydrochemical types of Qingtu Lake and the upper-middle reaches of the basin are different. The hydrochemical types in the upper and middle reaches of the Shiyang River Basin are Ca-HCO 3 [30]. However, the results of this study show that the hydrochemical types of Qingtu Lake have evolved into a Na-SO 4 (Cl) type, which is also verified in Figure 2.…”

“…According to the Mischka Lev classification method, the hydrochemical type of Qingtu Lake is Na-SO 4 (Cl). This is significantly different from the whole hydrochemical type (Ca-HCO 3 (SO 4 )) of the Shiyang River Basin ( Figure 2) [19,30]. According to TDS classification, the characteristics of Qingtu Lake have changed from freshwater (TDS ≈ 373.4 mg L −1 ) to extremely salty water (10,000 < TDS < 35,000 mg L −1 ), with some of the samples even showing the characteristics of salt brine (TDS > 35,000 mg L −1 ).Compared to the upper-middle reaches of the Shiyang River Basin, the characteristic of salinization in Qingtu Lake is obvious [31,32].…”

Identifying surface water evaporation loss of inland river basin based on evaporation enrichment model

“…In this study, we find that the evaporation loss of surface water increases with the increase of temperature and air humidity (Figure 5), which is consistent with previous researches (Gibson & Reid, 2014; Haiyan et al, 2018). From mountainous area to oasis area to desert area, the altitude decreases from 3650 m to 1420 m to 1310 m (Yang et al, 2017), and it is well known that the lower the altitude, the higher the temperature. According to the long‐term monitoring of the Shiyang River Basin from April 2017 to October 2019, the number of days that daily average temperature higher than 0°C was 234 in mountainous area, 278 in oasis area and 280 in desert area, respectively.…”

Calculation of targeted eco-environmental water requirements in a dry inland river: a case study of the Yarkand River Basin, Xinjiang, China

“…There are many inland rivers in the world, such as Amu Darya River, Syr Darya River, Heihe River, and Shiyang River, among others [27][28][29][30]. These river basins have similar ecological, environmental and social characteristics [2,31,32].…”