The influence of Zihe Stream on the groundwater resources of the Dawu well field and on the discharge at the Heiwang iron mine, Zibo City area, Shandong Province, China

Abstract

The Dawu well field, one of the largest in China, supplies most of the water for the Zibo City urban area in Shandong Province. The field yields 522,400–535,400 m3/d from an aquifer in fractured karstic Middle Ordovician carbonate rocks. Much of the recharge to the aquifer is leakage of surface water from Zihe Stream, the major drainage in the area. Installation of the Taihe Reservoir in 1972 severely reduced the downstream flow in Zihe Stream, resulting in a marked reduction in the water table in the Dawu field. Since 1994, following the installation of a recharge station on Zihe Stream upstream from the well field that injects water from the Taihe Reservoir into the stream, the groundwater resources of the field have recovered. An average of 61.2×103 m3/d of groundwater, mostly from the Ordovician aquifer, is pumped from the Heiwang iron mine, an open pit in the bed of Zihe Stream below the Taihe Reservoir. A stepwise regression equation, used to evaluate the role of discharge from the reservoir into the stream, confirms that reservoir water is one of the major sources of groundwater in the mine.