A quantitative assessment on groundwater salinization in the Tarim River lower reaches,Northwest China

Based on monitored data from 840 samples,we assessed the spatial and temporal variability of groundwater salinization in the Tarim River lower reaches combining classical statistics and geostatistics.Results show that total dissolved solids(TDS)is significantly correlated with other related ions,such as Na+,Mg2+,Ca2+,Cl and K+.TDS and underground water level have characteristics of spatial autocorrelation,both of which present the isotropic characteristic and conform to the spherical model in each year from 2001–2009.TDS is basically greater than 1 g/L but less than 2 g/L in the Tarim River lower reaches,which indicates that salt stagnation pollution is more serious.The most serious salinization(3 g/L<TDS≤35 g/L)contaminated area is mainly in the middle and lower part of the study area.