Shallow Groundwater Quality Monitoring and Assessment in Northern Ordos Cretaceous Artisan Basin, China

Abstract

Groundwater plays more and more important role in people's daily lives and social development in the study area for lack of surface water resources. So works of groundwater quality monitoring and assessment have great meaning to protect the public health. The geographic information system (GIS), as an analysis tool and visualization platform, is used to support data used, monitoring and groundwater quality assessment. In this research, about 140 hydrogeochemical data of the groundwater quality were collected. According to the requisition of the Chinese Groundwater Quality Standard, 17 parameters were chosen as the assessment indexes. And maximum contaminant level value of indexes such as arsenic, lead and fluoride were modified to meet the goal of public health protection. Then comprehensive assessment model was built to evaluate the groundwater quality base on GIS and groundwater quality distribution was analysis and mapped. The evaluation results indicated that four parameters in groundwater including total hardness, sulfate, TDS, chloride are major factors that influence the groundwater quality. The results also show that the groundwater quality in most areas is good enough to serve as drinking water supply and other purposes in the basin.