Impact of land-use patterns on distributed groundwater recharge and dischargeA case study of western Jilin, China

The impact of land-use on distributed groundwater recharge and discharge in the western Jilin (WJ) was analyzed in this study. WJ is a transitional, semi-arid zone with a fragile, hydrological closed ecosystem in the Songhua River Basin (SRB). The research tool includes a seamlessly linked MODFLOW, WetSpass, the Seepage packages, and ArcGIS. The model calibration showed good agreement between simulated water table elevation and measured water table depths, while predicted groundwater discharge zones showed strong correlations with field occurrences of drainage systems and wetlands. Simulated averages for distributed recharge, water table elevation and groundwater drawdown were 377.42mm/yr, 194.43m, and 0.18m respectively. Forest vegetation showed the highest recharge, followed by agricultural farmlands, while open-water and other drainage systems constituted groundwater exit zones. When present land-use conditions were compared with the hypothetical natural pre-development scenario, an overall loss of groundwater recharge (24.09mm/yr) was observed, which for the project area is 18.05 × 108m3. Groundwater abstraction seemed to be the cause of water table drawdown, especially in the immediate vicinities of the supply wells. An important issue of the findings was the ability of the hypothetical forest vegetation to protect, and hence sustain aquifer reserves and dependent ecosystems. The profound data capture capability of ArcGIS makes it particularly useful in spatio-temporal hydroecological modeling.