Reply on RC2

Abstract

Ecosystems in arid areas are fragile and are easily disturbed by various natural and human factors. The purpose of this study is to clarify the hydrological and ecological processes of arid inland river basins in Eurasia and provide a scientific basis for their sustainable development. From 2015 to 2020, we took the Shiyang River Basin, which has the highest utilization rate of water resources and the most prominent contradiction of water use, as a typical demonstration basin to establish and improve the isotope hydrology observation system. The data in the observation system are classified by water type (precipitation, river water, lake water, groundwater, soil water, and plant water). Six observation systems with stable isotopes as the main observation elements, including river source region, oasis region, reservoir channel system region, oasis farmland region, ecological engineering construction region, and salinization process region, have been built, and meteorological and hydrological data have also been collected. We will gradually improve the various observation systems, increase the data of observation sites, and update the data set yearly. We can use these data to carry out hydrometeorological and ecological scientific research and provide a scientific basis for water resources utilization and ecological environment restoration in arid areas. The datasets are available at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/d5kzm92nn3/1 (Zhu et al., 2021).