Statistical and Numerical Assessments of Groundwater Resource Subject to Excessive Pumping: Case Study in Southwest Taiwan

Groundwater, a salient water resource in Taiwan, has been subject to incessant and excessive pumping, inducing serious regional land subsidence and seawater intrusion. This study aims at assessing how excessive pumping impacts groundwater variations over the Pingtung Alluvial Plain (PAP) in Southwes...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Water (Basel) 2019-02, Vol.11 (2), p.360
Main Authors: Shih, Dong-Sin, Chen, Chia-Jeng, Li, Ming-Hsu, Jang, Cheng-Shin, Chang, Che-Min, Liao, Yuan-Ya
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alluvial plains
Analysis
Case studies
Coastal aquifers
Coastal zone
Downstream
Downstream effects
Groundwater
Groundwater levels
Hydrology
Hydrometeorology
Hypotheses
Land subsidence
Nonparametric statistics
Pumping
Rain
Rain and rainfall
Rainfall
Saline water intrusion
Salt water intrusion
Seawater
Simulation
Statistical analysis
Subsidence
Trends
Tributaries
Water resources
Water table
Water, Underground
Weather
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Groundwater, a salient water resource in Taiwan, has been subject to incessant and excessive pumping, inducing serious regional land subsidence and seawater intrusion. This study aims at assessing how excessive pumping impacts groundwater variations over the Pingtung Alluvial Plain (PAP) in Southwest Taiwan using both statistical and numerical techniques. We apply nonparametric methods to analyze the changing point and annual trend in various hydro-meteorological time series (e.g., rainfall, temperature, and groundwater levels (GLs)). Afterwards, we employ an integrated surface-subsurface model referred to as WASH123D to simulate GLs under the pumping-free scenario; any discrepancies identified between simulated and observed GLs could be an indicator of unregulated/illegal pumping. We find that annual GLs exhibit a significant increasing (decreasing) trend in the western (eastern) PAP. Our numerical experiment reveals diverging trends in simulated and observed GLs, mostly at the downstream of all the major tributaries, suggesting the consequence of unregulated/illegal pumping. Furthermore, upstream pumping may reduce lateral flow towards the downstream coastal area, triggering land subsidence in remote locations.
ISSN:2073-4441
2073-4441
DOI:10.3390/w11020360