Spatio-temporal variation of groundwater recharge in response to variability in precipitation, land use and soil in Yanqing Basin, Beijing, China

It is important to understand how groundwater recharge responds to precipitation variability in space and time, especially in those areas such as Yanqing Basin (China), where groundwater represents the sole water resource. A simple soil-water balance method is applied for spatio-temporal simulation of groundwater recharge in Yanqing Basin from 1981 to 2000. It was implemented on a monthly time step considering the effects of land use and soil texture. The area-average recharge associated with various land uses and soil textures was then compared with zonal analysis using a geographic information system (GIS). The main findings include: (1) the variation of groundwater recharge follows precipitation changes, either at yearly or seasonal intervals, (2) land use plays a more influential role in groundwater recharge than soil texture in this area, and (3) the water table quickly rises in response to recharge in the shallow parts of the aquifer, while there is a delay of 0.5–1.0 years where the groundwater level is at depth 4–10 m. The application demonstrates how spatio-temporal analysis can be utilized for groundwater-recharge estimation through distributed modeling and GIS.