Development and application of a novel method for regional assessment of groundwater contamination risk in the Songhua River Basin
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Since the 1950s, major advances in drilling technology and hydrogeological knowledge had facilitated a massive expansion in groundwater use across the developing world in order to satisfy the needs of irrigation, domestic purposes and industrial demand (Foster and Chilton, 2003). In China alone, > 500 large cities rely on groundwater resource for their drinking water supply (Van der Gun, 2012). These excessive exploitation and inappropriate activities at the land surface lead to and foster degradation of groundwater resources in many areas (Jiang, 2009). Moreover, remediation of contaminated aquifers is cost intensive and time consuming and may not reach remedial objectives due to large storage, physical inaccessibility and retardation of contaminants (Travis and Doty, 1990). In this context, groundwater contamination risk assessment provides a useful tool to design and implement groundwater protection measures to prevent or reduce groundwater contamination (Zaporozec et al., 2002).
In a risk assessment, where risk is defined as hazard plus vulnerability, the combined rating of the potential harmfulness posed by a pollution source (hazard assessment) and the possibility of the spreading into and within the groundwater (vulnerability assessment) could be interpreted as the probability for groundwater contamination, both in quantitative or qualitative terms depending on the used method (Johansson, 1999, Varnes, 1984). Regarding the groundwater vulnerability assessment, existing methods are classified into three categories: Index methods, statistical methods (Erwin and Tesoriero, 1997, Li et al., 2015) and process-based methods (Sinkevich et al., 2005, Milnes, 2011). An overview about available methods is given by Zaporozec et al. (2002). Index methods, such as DRASTIC (Aller et al., 1987) or GOD (Foster, 1987), which focus on the key factors controlling the solute transport processes, are the most commonly used procedures for vulnerability mapping. They are relatively inexpensive, straightforward, adaptable on site-specific conditions (e.g. Guo et al., 2007, Lin et al., 2016), have a minimum demand of data and produce an end product embeddable into decision-making processes (Focazio et al., 2002). In consequence, index based methods such as DRASTIC were applied to evaluate groundwater vulnerability for basins with very diverse conditions in many regions of the world such as Europe (e.g. Albuquerque et al., 2013, Panagopoulos et al., 2006), the Middle East (e.g. Jamrah et al., 2008, Awawdeh and Jaradat, 2010), Nepal (Shrestha et al., 2017) and China (e.g. Huan et al., 2012, Wang et al., 2012, Ye et al., 2015).
However, the potential of standardized index methods based on a few key factors to predict groundwater vulnerability is questioned among researchers (Rupert, 2001). Gogu and Dassargues (2000) therefore emphasized the need to integrate process-based methods such as numerical models into widely used index methods to take into account the physical processes of water movement and the associated fate and transport of contaminants in the environment. There have been a very limited number of studies to quantify intrinsic vulnerability by including numerical modelling (Yu et al., 2010, Sophocleous and Ma, 1998, Connell and Van Den Daele, 2003). Process based methods need extensive field data, both for model setup and model calibration (Butscher and Huggenberger, 2008). Especially for the assessment of larger catchments, such data and information are scarce and unequally distributed (Ireson et al., 2006, Wu et al., 2011). Furthermore, a considerable amount of computational power is required to simulate process-based methods at larger scales, particularly if chemical and biological processes and unsaturated zone mechanisms are included in the simulation (Anane et al., 2013).
For a detailed assessment of potential hazards, information about the pollution sources and the characteristic of the pollutants should be taken under investigation. The difficulties in obtaining this specific data lead to the preference of an index based assessment system for hazards (Wang et al., 2012). An approach often applied for smaller catchments is to set up an inventory of potential hazard sources in combination with weighting and rating schemes (e.g. Kuisi et al., 2014, Aliewi and Al-Khatib, 2015). Alternatively, several previous studies used grid based data such as land cover or land use as a proxy parameter for describing potential anthropogenic pollution hazard from diffusive and point sources (Bartzas et al., 2015). The obtained data is either included in a modified groundwater vulnerability assessment (Gomezdelcampo and Dickerson, 2008, Fritch et al., 2000) or in a separate index based hazard assessment (Panagopoulos et al., 2006, Saidi et al., 2009).
The present study is concerned with the assessment of groundwater vulnerability, groundwater hazard and the resulting groundwater risk for Songhua River Basin, a large scale catchment providing water resources for more than 62 million people in North-East China (Yuhong et al., 2010). Although Songhua River Basin was one of the earliest urbanized centers in China since the 1950s, a series of developmental strategies by the government calling for a “revitalization of the Northeast's old industrial base” brought in new economic development and promoted rapid urbanization (Zhang, 2008). However, urbanization and industrialization adversely affected the surrounding ecosystems and environment (Fu et al., 2016). One of the environmental issues of aquifers in the study area is an increased pollution of the aquifer system by Nitrate from fertilizer overuse (e.g. Zhang et al., 1996, Gu et al., 2013). As North-East China is the old industrial heartland of China, discharges and leakages from industrial sources and brownfields put an additional potential pressure on groundwater resources (Nixdorf et al., 2015). Hence, assessing the groundwater environmental risk in the region is very necessary.
In view of the aforementioned limitations, we chose a combined approach using public datasets and web services, remote sensing as well as numerical groundwater flow modelling to generate input data for an index method based assessment of aquifer vulnerability, hazard and risk. Particularly the embedding of both a simplified 2D groundwater flow model and web-query data in the index based assessment methods aims to improve dealing with aforementioned problems of scarce field data on larger scales.
In this context the main objectives of this study are: Firstly, to develop a methodology to combine web-query data from web mapping services, numerical groundwater modelling and public datasets into a GIS-based groundwater risk assessment framework, secondly to apply the method to provide maps of groundwater vulnerability, groundwater hazard potential and groundwater contamination in the entire Songhua River Basin at the highest resolution available and thirdly, to identify the importance and interrelation of input parameters and obtained maps using sensitivity analysis methods.
Section snippets
Study area description
The Songhua River Basin is located in the northeastern region of China (119°52′ –132°31′ E and 41°42′–51°38′ N) and covers an area of > 550,000 km2 (Fig. 1). Its water drains to Songhua River, which is with a length of > 2300 km the largest tributary of Amur River. Songhua River main tributaries are Nen River, which drains the Northern part of the basin and Second Songhua River coming from Jilin province in the Southern part of the catchment. The basin covers vast areas of the three Chinese
Groundwater risk assessment index method
The idea of an index based risk assessment is to find a quantitative way of expressing the likelihood that an aquifer be polluted by contaminants, which are introduced into the ground surface. This is determined by two groups of indicators (Fig. 2): Firstly by the aquifer's intrinsic vulnerability, which describes the ease with which a contaminant introduced to the subsurface can reach and diffuse the groundwater (Liggett and Talwar, 2009) and secondly by the hazard which is defined as a
Vulnerability and hazard parameter maps
In Songhua River Basin, modelled stationary depth to water ranged between a few meters and > 50 m covering the entire range of DRASTIC indices (Fig. 5a). The groundwater model results showed that a shallow, more vulnerable, groundwater system prevailed mainly in regions with low altitudes such as in the area of Songnen and Sanjiang plain as well was along the main rivers draining the catchment. Low recharge rates of < 50 mm per year were calculated for vast parts of the Songnen plain as well as the
Conclusions
This study provides a new method for assessing groundwater contamination risk on a large scale for the (upper) aquifers of Songhua River Basin. This was achieved by the integration of intrinsic vulnerability assessment using the DRASTIC model and an assessment of potential point and diffusive hazards in order to calculate the contamination risk indices. A new approach was proposed which combines public datasets, web service databases and groundwater flow modelling to derive the input datasets
Conflict of interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dr. Qiang Wang from the Heilongjiang Research Institute of Environmental Science for data support. This work is part of the H2O SUSTAIN project and financially supported by the EU-China Environmental Sustainability Programme of the European Union (EuropeAid/133582/L/ACT/CN).
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