Climate change and groundwater resources in Cambodia

Climate change has become a major global concern and threatens the security of natural environmental resources, including groundwater, especially for Cambodia. In this study, literature reviews related to climate change and groundwater resources in Cambodia were evaluated to address the impact of climate change on the groundwater environment. In Cambodia, global climate change will likely affect available water resources by driving changes in the groundwater recharge and usage pattern. Despite a general increase in the mean annual rainfall, a reduction in rainfall is anticipated during the dry season, which could lead to shortages of fresh water during the dry season. The impact of climate change on water resource environments can significantly affect national economic development. Thus, strategic management plansfor groundwater in response to climate change should be established to ensure the security of water resources in Cambodia.     

Environmental Effect Caused by Over-exploitation of Deep Groundwater in North China

Based on the formation and development analysis of the environmental geological disaster of land subsidence, earth fissures and other geological disasters in the North China, it showed these disasters caused a very serious problem in some areas of the North China, such as the deep groundwater exploitation cone, which is accumulated with great damage and loss and is hard to be controlled, therefore, great attention should be paid. It is considered that the formation of the deep groundwater cone is the root of various geological environmental problems, and the groundwater cone recovery is the key to solve other environmental problems     

Experimental study of impact of a certain polluted river on groundwater along river bank in Southeast China

Based on the large scale land and resources survey project--groundwater contamination survey in southeast China, a certain polluted river and its typical sites along its bank were selected as research objectives. Such river is a comprehensive sewage channel for certain provincial capital city, with complicated types of pollutants. Based on the analysis on water level of horizonal and vertical hydrogeologic profile and water quality monitoring data, the impact and range of the polluted river on local groundwater were evaluated. Data show that the polluted river supplies water to underground aquifers throughout the year, which has great impact on groundwater horizontally, but different ions have different responses. Major influential indexes such as inorganic component 3-nitrogen, sulphate, chloride etc. present an obvious relevance, while iron, manganese, fluoride, arsenic and heavy metal and so on are less impacted. The first four indexes in groundwater are less impacted by the surface sewage because of their protogenesis, and heavy metal components become less due to sediment filtration. Data also show that deep groundwater is less influenced, on the contrary, ammonia nitrogen ion is obviously impacted. On the basis of influence degree as well as range of evaluation, some factors that caused the existing influence were discussed and proposes feasible study direction.     

Integrated method of RS and GPR for monitoring the changes in the soil moisture and groundwater environment due to underground coal mining

Mining affects the environment in different ways depending on the physical context in which the mining occurs. In mining areas with an arid environment, mining affects plants’ growth by changing the amount of available water. This paper discusses the effects of mining on two important determinants of plant growth—soil moisture and groundwater table (GWT)—which were investigated using an integrated approach involving a field sampling investigation with remote sensing (RS) and ground-penetrating radar (GPR). To calculate and map the distribution of soil moisture for a target area, we initially analyzed four models for regression analysis between soil moisture and apparent thermal inertia and finally selected a linear model for modeling the soil moisture at a depth 10 cm; the relative error of the modeled soil moisture was about 6.3% and correlation coefficient 0.7794. A comparison of mined and unmined areas based on the results of limited field sampling tests or RS monitoring of Landsat 5-thermatic mapping (TM) data indicated that soil moisture did not undergo remarkable changes following mining. This result indicates that mining does not have an effect on soil moisture in the Shendong coal mining area. The coverage of vegetation in 2005 was compared with that in 1995 by means of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) deduced from TM data, and the results showed that the coverage of vegetation in Shendong coal mining area has improved greatly since 1995 because of policy input RMB￥0.4 per ton coal production by Shendong Coal Mining Company. The factor most affected by coal mining was GWT, which dropped from a depth of 35.41 m before mining to a depth of 43.38 m after mining at the Bulianta Coal Mine based on water well measurements. Ground-penetrating radar at frequencies of 25 and 50 MHz revealed that the deepest GWT was at about 43.4 m. There was a weak water linkage between the unsaturated zone and groundwater, and the decline of water table primarily resulted from the well pumping for mining safety rather than the movement of cracking strata. This result is in agreement with the measurements of the water wells. The roots of nine typical plants in the study area were investigated. Populus was found to have the deepest root system with a depth of about 26 m. Based on an assessment of plant growth demands and the effect of mining on environmental factors, we concluded that mining will have less of an effect on plant growth at those sites where the primary GWT depth before mining was deep enough to be unavailable to plants. If the primary GWT was available for plant growth before mining, especially to those plants with deeper roots, mining will have a significant effect on the growth of plants and the mechanism of this effect will include the loss of water to roots and damage to the root system.     

Contamination of shallow aquifers by arsenic in upper reaches of Tista river at Siliguri–Jalpaiguri area of West Bengal, India

Arsenic is present in groundwater at Siliguri–Jalpaiguri area, West Bengal, India. This is the place where Tista river descending from the Himalayas meets the alluvial plain. The area represents alluvial fan and floodplains of Tista, Mahananda-Balasan, Jaladhaka and its tributaries. In the river sediment samples, para- and ferro-magnetic minerals within 0.3–0.05 mm fraction contain 9–80 ppm of arsenic. The study indicates that iron bearing minerals viz. biotite, hornblende as well as iron coated grains of the sediment are major contributors towards arsenic budget. Though magnetite as a mineral shows maximum arsenic content (22 ppm), it is volumetrically not of much significance. Measurement of groundwater collected from tube wells shows up to 0.05 ppm of arsenic. These arsenic contaminated tube wells occur in a linear fashion along the course of the rivers. Moreover, localization of contaminated tube wells coincides with the change of channel gradient as observed in longitudinal section. The study enumerates a cause–effect relationship of arsenic occurrence with river gradient and fluvial sedimentation.     

Erratum to: Geochemical and environmental magnetic characteristics of high arsenic aquifer sediments from Datong Basin,northern China

Geochemical and environmental magnetic studies were carried out to identify the effect of iron oxyhydroxides on arsenic mobilization in high arsenic aquifer system. Using high arsenic sediment samples from two boreholes, specifically drilled for this study, chemical composition and magnetic properties including magnetic susceptibility, saturation remnant magnetization, and isothermal remnant magnetization were measured. Results of correlation analysis of element contents show that arsenic and iron are closely associated with each other (r ² = 0.40, α = 0.05, n = 21). In contrast, the correlation of phosphorus with iron (r = 0.11, α = 0.05, n = 21) and arsenic (r ² = 0.18, α = 0.05, n = 21) was poor, which might result from competitive adsorption of phosphorus and arsenic on the surface of Fe-oxyhydroxides. The high correlation coefficients between arsenic contents and magnetic parameters suggest that the ferrimagnetic minerals including maghemite and hematite are the dominant carrier of arsenic in aquifer sediments. The results of sequential extraction experiments also revealed the association of arsenic with reducible iron oxides, such as maghemite and hematite in aquifer sediments. Therefore, under reducing conditions, reductive dissolution and desorption of arsenic from Fe-oxyhydroxides into the aqueous phase should be the dominant geochemical processes for its enrichment in groundwater at Datong. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Natural background levels and threshold values for groundwater in fluvial Pleistocene and Tertiary marine aquifers in Flanders,Belgium

Aquifers from the same typology can have strongly different groundwater chemistry. Deducing the groundwater quality of less well-characterized aquifers from well-documented aquifers belonging to the same typology should be done with great reserve, and can only be considered as a preliminary approach. In the EU’s 6th FP BRIDGE project “Background cRiteria for the IDentification of Groundwater thrEsholds”, a methodology for the derivation of threshold values (TV) for groundwater bodies is proposed. This methodology is tested on four aquifers in Flanders of the sand and gravel typology. The methodology works well for all but the Ledo-Paniselian aquifer, where the subdivision into a fresh and saline part is disproved, as a gradual natural transition from fresh to saline conditions in the aquifer is observed. The 90 percentile is proposed as natural background level (NBL) for the unconfined Pleistocene deposits, ascribing the outliers to possible influence of pollution. For the Tertiary aquifers, high values for different parameters have a natural origin and the 97.7 percentile is preferred as NBL. The methodology leads to high TVs for parameters presenting low NBL, when compared to the standard used as a reference. This would allow for substantial anthropogenic inputs of these parameters.     

The effect of possible climate change on natural groundwater recharge based on a simple model: a study of four karstic aquifers in SE Spain

The study presented in this paper constitutes an initial approach to the problematic task of evaluating the effects of possible climate change on natural water recharge to aquifers. To estimate such effects, a purpose-designed mathematical model termed Estimation of Recharge in Over-exploited Aquifers (ERAS) has been used. It enables to simulate the monthly water recharge to an aquifer, provided that prior knowledge of the exploitation to which it is subjected and the variation caused by these two actions on the piezometric level of the aquifer is available. The basic data required for its application are: precipitation, temperature, groundwater extraction, stored groundwater surface and storage coefficient. The main advantage presented by this model is its independence of the mechanism by which water is displaced through the ground and within the unsaturated zone. The ERAS code was applied to four over-exploited karstic aquifers in Alto Vinalopó (Alicante, Spain) with the goal of generating a synthesized series of values for natural groundwater recharge in each of the aquifers for the 100 years of the twentieth century. Each series thus obtained after being grouped into decades was subjected to statistical processing, which revealed that in every case a logarithmically decreasing trend was present.     

Monitoring and methods to analyse the groundwater quality degradation risk in coastal karstic aquifers (Apulia,Southern Italy)

A multi-methodological approach based on monitoring and spatio-temporal analysis of groundwater quality changes is proposed. The presented tools are simple, quick and cost-effective to give service to all sorts of users. The chief purpose of the monitoring network is the detection of the piezometric or potenziometric level in the aquifer. The spatial and multi-temporal analysis of usual chemical and physical data provides both an assessment of the spatial vulnerability of the aquifer to seawater intrusion, defining a salinity threshold between fresh groundwater and brackish groundwater and of the water quality trend in terms of salinity. The evaluation of the salinity trend or of salinity-correlated parameters highlights the effects of groundwater mismanagement. The multiparameter logging provides a rapid groundwater quality classification for each well. The whole approach allows evaluating the effects of current management criteria and designing more appropriate management targets. The Apulian karstic coastal aquifers have been selected as a case study (Southern Italy). Three types of aquifer zones can be distinguished: (1) areas with low vulnerability to seawater intrusion, (2) areas with high vulnerability and (3) areas with variable vulnerability in which the salt degradation largely depends on the ability to manage the well discharge. The water quality degradation caused by seawater intrusion appears to be a combined effect of an anomalous succession of drought periods observed from about 1980 onwards and increased groundwater pumping, particularly during drought periods. A management criterion based on aquifer zones is proposed.     

Viscosity effect on consolidation of poroelastic soil due to groundwater table depression

In this study, the viscosity effect on consolidation of poroelastic soil due to groundwater table depression is examined. A viscoelastic consolidation numerical model is developed to conduct this examination. By nondimensionalizing the governing equations the viscosity number that depends on hydraulic conductivity, viscous moduli, and thickness of soil is obtained to represent the viscosity effect on consolidation of poroelastic soil. The case of clay stratum sandwiched between sandy strata subjected to sudden and gradual groundwater table depressions is used to investigate the importance of viscosity effect to poroelastic consolidation. The results show that the displacement and pore water pressure of clay stratum are strongly related to the viscosity effect. The overestimation of soil displacement will occur if the viscosity effect is neglected. Hence, the viscosity effect needs to be considered in modeling consolidation of poroelastic soil under groundwater table depression.