Compromised Groundwater Quality Resulting from Large-Scale Damming Projects
Funding Year: 2011
Research Areas: Freshwater, Sustainability
Regions: Asia
In 2006, China completed construction of the massive Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze River. This EVP will look at the impact of the dam on the groundwater supply for more than 30 million people who inhabit the region.
In an effort to provide hydroelectric power, increase water supplies for domestic and agricultural uses and provide flood control, large-scale damming projects are increasingly common on a global-scale. Nowhere is this more apparent than in China, with the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangzi River serving as a prime example.
The Yangzi Rivers headwaters originate in the Tibetan Plateau and drain roughly one-fifth of Chinas land surface. While providing a series of benefits, that range from hydro-electric power generation to flood control to increased water storage, negative outcomes associated with disturbance of the river system(s) are also noteworthythey include displacement of inhabitants, massive destruction of terrestrial ecosystems, alteration of aquatic/marine ecosystems (particularly fisheries) and downstream river bank destabilization.
However, there are also large-scale changes to groundwater hydrology that may have sweeping impacts on water quality and yet are largely unreported. Prominent groundwater hydrologic changes resulting from dam emplacement are a rapid rise in the water table, alteration of surface-subsurface flow, and a change in aquifer residence time.
Through hydrological-(bio)geochemical process coupling, the suitability of groundwater for consumption or irrigation may then be degraded through multiple effects: (i) Salts residing in the previously unsaturated (vadose) zone above the water table may increase groundwater salinity; (ii) toxic elements previously stabilized in the aerated vadose zone may be released to groundwater; (iii) surface or near-surface water constituents such as dissolved organic carbon may stimulate biogeochemical processes that alter groundwater chemistry, and (iv) chemicals used on the land surface (e.g., pesticides) may enter groundwater through enhanced transport pathways.
This project will use the Jianghan plain, directly downstream from the Three Gorges Dam in the Yangzi River basin, as a model test area to examine the impacts of large-scale dams on groundwater quality. Researchers will develop a hydrologic model for the plain, determine groundwater chemistry, identify reactive triggers for degradation of groundwater quality and ascertain the combined impacts of the Three Gorges Dam and land-use change on groundwater quality.
The projects finding will have critical impacts on accurately evaluating potential negative effects on the viability of water resources for the regions more than 30 million people and the environment.
Learn more about the Environmental Venture Projects grant program and other funded projects.
Principal Investigators:
Scott Fendorf, Terry Huffington Professor, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Steve Gorelick, Cyrus Fisher Tolman Professor in the School of Earth Sciences and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Stephan Graham, Chester Naramore Dean of the School of Earth, Energy, & Environmental Sciences, Welton Joseph and Maud L'Anphere Crook Professor and Professor, by courtesy, of Geophysics and Energy Resources Engineering
Eric Lambin, George and Setsuko Ishiyama Provostial Professor and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Richard Luthy, Silas H. Palmer Professor of Civil Engineering