TY - JOUR

T1 - Land subsidence and rebound in the Taiyuan basin, northern China, in the context of inter-basin water transfer and groundwater management

AU - Tang, Wei

AU - Zhao, Xiangjun

AU - Motagh, Mahdi

AU - Bi, Gang

AU - Li, Jing

AU - Chen, Mingjie

AU - Chen, Hua

AU - Liao, Mingsheng

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 42001368 , the Open Fund of State Key Laboratory of Water Resource Protection and Utilization in Coal Mining under Grant WPUKFJJ2019-17 , and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant 2021YQDC05 . The Copernicus Sentinel-1 data were provided by ESA and downloaded from ASF Data Search Vertex ( https://search.asf.alaska.edu/#/ ). For groundwater level data, we acknowledge Dr. Weiyu Ma from China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC) and Hong Wang from Shanxi Provincial Department of Water Resources. We thank Prof. Roberto Tomás from Universidad de Alicante and Dr. Mahmud Haghighi from Leibniz University Hannover for providing suggestions on using wavelet tools in this study. Two anonymous reviewers are thanked for critically reading the manuscript and suggesting substantial improvements. Some of the figures were generated using Generic Mapping Tools ( Wessel et al., 2019 ).

PY - 2022/2

Y1 - 2022/2

N2 - The freshwater scarcity and sustainability of overexploited aquifers have been recognized as a big threat to global water security for human development. Consequently, much research has focused in the past on negative consequences of groundwater abstraction, but somewhat less has been documented about the impacts of adequate management practices to address water shortages. Here, using an integrated analysis of InSAR displacement data, groundwater, and geophysical modeling we show how combined management provisions and inter-basin water transfer project has affected the aquifer system in Taiyuan basin in North China. Following groundwater recovery, the alleviation of land subsidence was found with rates being reduced by up to ~70% in the period 2017–2020 with respect to the period 2007–2010. The increase in pore pressure caused by rising groundwater in Taiyuan city, north of the basin, turned four subsidence centers with rates exceeding 110 mm/yr in the 1980 to uplift centers with rates up to +25 mm/yr between 2017 and 2020. A simple linear elastic model for homogenous subsurface properties can explain InSAR-measured surface displacements well. In the central basin, we found a significant seasonal displacement with annual amplitude up to 43 mm (negative peak in autumn and positive peak in spring) related to the groundwater recharge and discharge due to agricultural pumping irrigation. Using cross-wavelet method, we showed a relatively short time lags (less than one month) between surface deformation and water level changes in the central basin, indicating the low-permeability clayey units have a limited influence in delaying the compaction of aquifer system. Quantifying the effects of adequate groundwater management measures and large-scale engineering approaches like inter-basin water transfer to recharge pumped aquifers provide insight for local governments and decision-makers to properly evaluate the impacts of their policy in recovering the sustainability and efficiency of aquifers in water-deficient basins.

AB - The freshwater scarcity and sustainability of overexploited aquifers have been recognized as a big threat to global water security for human development. Consequently, much research has focused in the past on negative consequences of groundwater abstraction, but somewhat less has been documented about the impacts of adequate management practices to address water shortages. Here, using an integrated analysis of InSAR displacement data, groundwater, and geophysical modeling we show how combined management provisions and inter-basin water transfer project has affected the aquifer system in Taiyuan basin in North China. Following groundwater recovery, the alleviation of land subsidence was found with rates being reduced by up to ~70% in the period 2017–2020 with respect to the period 2007–2010. The increase in pore pressure caused by rising groundwater in Taiyuan city, north of the basin, turned four subsidence centers with rates exceeding 110 mm/yr in the 1980 to uplift centers with rates up to +25 mm/yr between 2017 and 2020. A simple linear elastic model for homogenous subsurface properties can explain InSAR-measured surface displacements well. In the central basin, we found a significant seasonal displacement with annual amplitude up to 43 mm (negative peak in autumn and positive peak in spring) related to the groundwater recharge and discharge due to agricultural pumping irrigation. Using cross-wavelet method, we showed a relatively short time lags (less than one month) between surface deformation and water level changes in the central basin, indicating the low-permeability clayey units have a limited influence in delaying the compaction of aquifer system. Quantifying the effects of adequate groundwater management measures and large-scale engineering approaches like inter-basin water transfer to recharge pumped aquifers provide insight for local governments and decision-makers to properly evaluate the impacts of their policy in recovering the sustainability and efficiency of aquifers in water-deficient basins.

KW - Groundwater depletion

KW - Groundwater level rise

KW - InSAR

KW - Land subsidence

KW - Water transfer project

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85119252996&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.rse.2021.112792

DO - 10.1016/j.rse.2021.112792

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85119252996

VL - 269

JO - Remote sensing of environment

JF - Remote sensing of environment

SN - 0034-4257

M1 - 112792

ER -