The Response of Groundwater Level to Climate Change and Human Activities in Baotou City, China

Abstract

The response mechanism of groundwater to climate change and human activities in cities within arid and semi-arid regions, such as the Urban Planning Area of Baotou City (UPABC), northern China, is a complicated problem to understand. We analyzed the climate change relationships, including precipitation and temperature, and analyzed changes in human activities, such as groundwater consumption, and then statistically analyzed the main factors affecting groundwater depth. Furthermore, cross-wavelet and wavelet coherence methods were used to analyze the response relationship and hysteresis of groundwater depth to precipitation to better understand the groundwater depth response law. The results showed that the annual precipitation in the UPABC reduction rate was 3.3 mm/10 yr, and the annual average temperature increase rate was 0.43 °C/10 yr, from 1981 to 2017. The unconfined water decrease rate was 0.50 m/yr, and the confined water decrease rate was 0.7 m/yr. The unconfined and confined water depths were affected by precipitation and groundwater exploitation, respectively, with correlation coefficients of 0.58 and 0.57, respectively. The hysteresis of groundwater depth to precipitation was about 9–14 months. However, changes in groundwater depth, especially confined water depth, were greatly affected by groundwater exploitation. This reflected the imbalance in consumption and recharges in the UPABC, highlighting the long-term risk in areas relying on access to this resource. Therefore, arid inland zones of northern China, such as the UPABC, should pay more attention to the rational development of groundwater and strengthen the management and protection of groundwater resources.

Groundwater response to climate variability in Mediterranean type climate zones with comparisons of California (USA) and Portugal

“…Today, over 2 billion people rely on groundwater as their primary source of freshwater (Kundzewicz and Döll 2009) and 1.7 billion people live in water-stressed areas (Gleeson et al 2012). Aquifers in semiarid regions, including the Mediterranean (Giorgi 2006;Stigter et al 2014) and the southwestern US (Barco et al 2010;Manna et al 2019), are particularly vulnerable to climate change (Navarra and Tubiana 2013; Cui et al 2020) and natural climate variability (Taylor et al 2013;Cui et al 2017). Moreover, two thirds of the world's population inhabit coastal areas (United Nations 2016) making coastal aquifers in semiarid areas more susceptible to excessive anthropogenic activities such as overabstraction and population inflation from tourism.…”

Influence of Climate Change and Anthropogenic Activities on Groundwater Level in the Northern Huangqihai Basin, China

“…When α was 0.05, the threshold corresponding to the level of significance was 1.96. If the intersection of the UF and UB curves was between the significant horizontal lines, the time corresponding to the intersection was considered as the time of the mutation (Cui et al, 2020).…”

“…Groundwater is an important resource for human survival and development, especially in the arid and semiarid areas of Northwest China, where water resources are scarce and the ecological environment is sensitive and fragile (Wang et al 2020;Wu et al 2019Wu et al , 2020Ren et al 2021;Wei et al 2021). In the past 100 years, the increase in temperature and rainfall variability, as well as changes in natural environment, has changed the quantity, quality and spatiotemporal distribution of groundwater resources (Li et al, 2019;Cui et al, 2020). Simultaneously, the interference of anthropogenic activities on groundwater has increased (Acharyya and Achiransu 2014;Yihdego et al, 2017b;Li et al, 2018b;He and Wu 2019a;Khan et al, 2020), which has changed the evolution of the groundwater environment from a single naturally driven model to a dual naturally-artificially driven mode (Wang et al, 2006).…”

“…Wei et al (2016) used the bidirectional regression mutation analysis method to analyze the response relationship between a decrease in the groundwater level and the irrigation area in the Jiansanjiang region of Heilongjiang Province. The Mann-Kendall ( M-K) test is commonly utilized to evaluate the influence of climate change and anthropogenic activities on changes in groundwater depth (Zhu et al, 2017;Cui et al, 2020). Gemitzi and Stefanopoulos (2011) applied the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model based on abundant basic data to analyze the influence of irrigation and rainfall on the groundwater level.…”

Potential Impact of Climate Change Analysis on the Management of Water Resources under Stressed Quantity and Quality Scenarios

“…Climate drives the hydrological cycle and, as a consequence, any change in the former will impact the latter [8]. With extreme events such as drought, floods, and heatwaves, the scientific community has gradually become aware of the importance of the effects of climate change on water resources and its impacts on the water cycle [9]. Climate change will affect the availability of freshwater resources in the future and will impact water supply [10] and the quality of this resource for human consumption [11].…”