ABSTRACT
This case study concerns the salt intrusion into the fresh groundwater in an Inner Mongolia village called Yaobata located approximately 1300 km west of Beijing, China. Yaobata borders the Dengali desert on the west and the Helansan mountain on the east with a reclaimed desert land of 64 sq. km. for agricultural production and a population over 8000 people. Over the years, continual excessive withdrawals of the groundwater with little recharge have resulted in drop in groundwater level by 4 meters and increases in salinity is exceeding 3 g/l at some pumped wells. Extensive field data collected show that the source of salt is from the Dowsu Lake located in the southwest corner of Yaobata A deterministic numerical model was developed and used to estimate future piezometric head and salinity distributions under the present scheme of groundwater usage. In addition, model parameters are considered random ariables in space. Conditional simulation based on simulated annealing is used to generate 100 realizations of model parameters in the numerical model. The statistics of the resulting realizations of the piezometric heads and salinity re obtained. Based on these results management plans are proposed to insure sustainable groundwater supply for the community.
