Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Downloads | Help

UP: Umweltphysik

UP 1: Hydrosph
äre

UP 1.3: Fachvortrag

Monday, March 13, 2006, 14:45–15:00, A

Groundwater recharge and paleoclimate in the North China Plain — •Andreas M. Kreuzer¹, Werner Aeschbach-Hertig¹, Christoph v. Rohden¹, Rolf Kipfer², and Chen Zongyu³ — ¹Institut für Umweltphysik, Universität Heidelberg — ²Isotope Geology, ETH Zürich — ³Institute of Hydrogeology and Environmental Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Zhengding

The North China Plain (NCP), is the largest alluvial plain in East Asia and consists of deposits of the Yellow River. It is one of the most densely populated areas of the world with great agricultural importance for China. The climate is temperate continental, influenced by the south-east monsoon.

We conducted an environmental tracer and noble gas temperature study using more than 50 groundwater wells in the deep confined aquifer system of the northern part of the NCP, the aquifer that is actually used for irrigation and drinking water. Objectives were first the determination of groundwater recharge with the anthropogenic tracers SF₆ and ³H-³He, and second the determination of the climatic signal of the transition from the last glacial maximum to the Holocene using the noble gas thermometer and the stable isotopes ²H and ¹⁸O as climate indicators and ¹⁴C to obtain a time scale. The correlation between noble gas temperatures and stable isotopes is important for the climatic interpretation of other stable isotope data.