The deformation behavior of soil mass in the subsidence region of Beijing, China

Abstract

Abstract. Land subsidence induced by excessive groundwater withdrawal has been a major environmental and geological problem in the Beijing plain area. The monitoring network of land subsidence in Beijing has been established since 2002 and has covered the entire plain area by the end of 2008. Based on data from extensometers and groundwater observation wells, this paper establishes curves of variations over time for both soil mass deformation and water levels and the relationship between soil mass deformation and water level. In addition, an analysis of deformation behavior is carried out for soil mass with various lithologies at different depths depending on the corresponding water level. Finally, the deformation behavior of soil mass is generalized into five categories. The conclusions include: (i) the current rate of deformation of the shallow soil mass is slowing, and most of the mid-deep and deep soil mass continue to compress at a more rapid speed; (ii) the sand strata behaves elastically, while the clay soil mass at different depths is usually characterized by elastic-plastic and creep deformation, which can be considered as visco-elastoplastic.

Characterization of land subsidence induced by groundwater withdrawals in Wenyu River alluvial fan, Beijing, China

“…A long sequences of land subsidence monitoring data was used to analyze the deformation behaviour of soil in Shanghai , Tianjin (Dong et al, 2008), Suzhou, Xi'an and Changzhou (Shi et al, 2006), China. The deformation behavior of compression layer is also analysed at the rapidly development stage in Beijing (Tian et al, 2012), and, the study of the relationship between land subsidence and groundwater is also carried out at the same time (Yang et al, 2013). The previous research is insufficiency in some respects such as the different layer characters of land subsidence and the relationship between land subsidence and the groundwater level change with the same monitoring data in the same area, and the reason of the compression characteristic emerged through multiple factors and multi-angle analysis.…”