Authors: CHEN Hao-rui *, **, GAO Zhan-yi *, **, WANG Shao-li *, **, HU Ya-qiong *, **
* China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China,
** National Center for Efficient Irrigation Engineering and Technology Research-Beijing, Beijing 100048, China

Abstract: A model of the unconfined groundwater movement in the Wuqiao County, North China Plain, was developed based on GMS-Modflow. The calibrated model was then used to simulate the response of the shallow groundwater level (SGL) to the climate change (CC) and the human activities (HA) variability under three scenarios, namely the standard, CC and HA variability in the conning 40 years. The result shows that the SGL will decline at the speed of 19.3cm/a under current condition, thus the SGL will decrease by 7.74m from the beginning of 2011 to the beginning of 2050. Under emission circumstances of A1B, A2 and B1, though the average annual precipitation predicted by GCMs may increase by 4.1%, 5.37% and 3.86% in the conning forty years, the SGL will decrease at 16.9cm/a, 18.5cm/a and 19.3cm/a considering if direct and indirect influences of CC are considered simultaneously. This result indicates that the slight increase of the precipitation will not obviously slow down the drop of SGL in the future. There fore, the artificial measures must be taken to retard the dropping of SGL. For relieving the dropping SGL water-saving technologies must be promoted, such as, using non-conventional water resources (e.g. the waste water) to substitute the conventional water and to raise the surface water supply. It will aggravate the SGL increase the water pumping from the confined aquifer and increase non-irrigation water.

Key words: climate change, human activities variability, shallow groundwater level, Modflow, water-saving measures.

Published in: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, Vol. 43, No. 3, 2012
Article ID: 0559-9350 (2011) 03-0344-10