Abstract
Eight groundwater observation wells were installed along the river plain, where the landscapes varied from floodplain, to oasis farmland, to desert-oasis ecotone to desert, in a typical desert-oasis ecotone in northwestern China. Ten years of data were used to analyze temporal and spatial changes in the groundwater depth. The results indicated that in the last decade: (1) the groundwater depths in the floodplain (GW1) and the desert (GW8) were basically stable; (2) the groundwater depths in the oasis farmland (GW2, GW3, GW4) increased dramatically: the annual fluctuations were 1.43, 1.01 and 0.79 m respectively, with the groundwater depths increasing by 0.13–0.18 m every year; (3) the groundwater depths in the desert-oasis ecotone (GW5, GW6, GW7) also increased dramatically: the annual fluctuations were 1.10, 1.06 and 1.05 m respectively, and the depths increased by 0.10–0.15 m every year; (4) the influence distance between the river and both the farmland and the desert-oasis ecotone was about 1000–2000 m in the study area. These results show that the natural seasonal fluctuation influence on groundwater depths was not significant, but the human-induced fluctuations such as intensive irrigation caused a significant increase in groundwater depth in both the farmland and the desert-oasis ecotone, seriously affecting sustainable agriculture development and the environment, in the oasis.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Marian Rhys for the English language review. This project was supported by the Outstanding Youth Foundation Project, National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41125002).
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Wang, G., Zhao, W. The spatio-temporal variability of groundwater depth in a typical desert-oasis ecotone. J Earth Syst Sci 124, 799–806 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-015-0571-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-015-0571-z