Investigation into subsidence hazards due to groundwater pumping from Aquifer II in Changzhou, China

Y.-S. Xu, Y. Yuan, S.-L. Shen, Zhenyu Yin, H.-N. Wu, L. Ma

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

50 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015.This paper presents an investigation into increased deformation of Aquifer II caused by groundwater pumping from the aquifer in Changzhou, China. As groundwater levels of aquifers have been decreasing in recent decades due to uncontrolled water pumping, land subsidence is becoming a serious geohazard in Changzhou. Based on recently reported field data, the compression of aquitards has not increased compared to that of aquifers with the same scale of layer thickness. The Cosserat continuum model was adopted to analyse the observed phenomenon in this study. A classic Cauchy continuum model is also used for comparison. The comparison between these two models indicates that the proposed approach can interpret the increased deformation well, and the classic Cauchy continuum model underestimates the aquifer deformation as it does not consider shear displacement and macro-rotation. A discussion on the relationship between the groundwater level in the aquifer and subsidence is then undertaken. The results show that the severity of the annual subsidence is correlated with the variation in groundwater level in Aquifer II. To mitigate the subsidence hazards, countermeasures should be adopted to avoid the shear stress in aquifers which results from the high hydraulic gradient, by the appropriate allocation of pumping wells and by restricting groundwater withdrawal volume from each pumping operation.
Original languageEnglish
Article numberA016
Pages (from-to)281-296
Number of pages16
JournalNatural Hazards
Volume78
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2015
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Cosserat continuum model
  • Deformation of aquifer
  • Groundwater withdrawal
  • Land subsidence

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Water Science and Technology
  • Atmospheric Science
  • Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous)

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