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Understanding the Effects of Anthropogenic Activities on the Sustainability of Groundwater Resources

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Resources and Sustainable Utilization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (26 March 2023) | Viewed by 3018

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-2152, USA
Interests: fluid flow and contaminant transport through surface and subsurface environments; physical, chemical, mathematical, and statistical description and quantification of hydrologic processes
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
School of Water Resources and Environment, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China
Interests: groundwater hydrology; earthquake hydrology; hydrochemistry; time series

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Groundwater accounts for as much as 33% of global water withdrawals, with over two billion people entirely dependent on groundwater as their sole source of drinking water.

Although groundwater is renewable, it is vulnerable to anthropogenic activities (e.g., excessive pumping and evaporative losses, wastewater and mine discharges, irrigation return flows), leading to declining surface and groundwater levels, loss of wetlands and ecologic health, and degraded water quality.

Understanding the factors and processes that define and control groundwater circulation and quality due to anthropogenic activities is key to sustainably managing groundwater resources.

This Special Issue will present original, in-depth research papers addressing recent progress in understanding the effect of anthropogenic activities on the sustainability of groundwater resources.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • New methods for estimating groundwater recharge
  • Advances in optimizing groundwater management
  • Effects of excessive groundwater withdrawals on ecosystems
  • Managing the injection of reclaimed water for minimizing groundwater degradation
  • Groundwater resource assessment and mitigation in mining areas
  • Anthropogenic effects on groundwater circulation and quality
  • Remote-sensing methods for improving groundwater management

Prof. Dr. Todd C. Rasmussen
Dr. Zheming Shi
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • groundwater
  • sustainable groundwater development
  • anthropogenic groundwater impacts
  • groundwater optimization management
  • groundwater circulation
  • ecosystem management
  • over-pumping
  • groundwater quality
  • reclaimed water
  • mining

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 2047 KiB  
Article
Relationship between Water Surface Area of Qingtu Lake and Ecological Water Delivery: A Case Study in Northwest China
by Yuntong Guo, Jingli Shao, Qiulan Zhang and Yali Cui
Sustainability 2021, 13(9), 4684; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13094684 - 22 Apr 2021
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2067
Abstract
Qingtu Lake is located between Tengger Desert and Badain Jilin Desert, Gansu Province, Northwest China. It is the terminal lake of Shiyang River. In recent years, Qingtu lake has maintained a certain area of water surface and vegetation by artificial water conveyance. It [...] Read more.
Qingtu Lake is located between Tengger Desert and Badain Jilin Desert, Gansu Province, Northwest China. It is the terminal lake of Shiyang River. In recent years, Qingtu lake has maintained a certain area of water surface and vegetation by artificial water conveyance. It is of great significance in preventing the convergence of the two deserts and restraining the trend of ecological deterioration of Shiyang River Basin. The relationship between the water surface area and the ecological water conveyance have not been thoroughly investigated. This study analyzed the spatial and temporal distribution of water surface area of Qingtu Lake and surrounding reeds by interpreting remote sensing data; the change of water surface area under the influence of meteorological factors and water conveyance by linear regression; the water conveyance to maintain current water surface area by water balance method, as well as the reasonable ecological water delivery in high flow year, normal flow year and low flow year by the means of analyzing the upstream inflow and water consumption in Minqin Basin. The results showed that there is a significant correlation between the water surface area of Qingtu Lake, evaporation and ecological water conveyance, and the minimum and maximum water surface areas generally appear before and after water delivery, indicating that the ecological water delivery and evaporation are the two main factors affecting the water surface area change of Qingtu Lake. The result calculated by linear regression indicated that the ecological water delivery volume to maintain current water surface area of Qingtu Lake is 3.146 × 107 m3/yr, while the value was 3.136 × 107 m3/yr calculated by water balance method. These two results are similar and can be verified with each other. Reasonable ecological water conveyance of Qingtu Lake in high flow year, normal flow year and low flow years were 4 × 107 m3/yr, 3.2 × 107 m3/yr and 2.3 × 107 m3/yr, respectively. Full article
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