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Rising springs along the Silk Road

¹State Key Laboratory of Hydrology, Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
²Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California–Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

View larger version (19K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 1. Location map of study area showing sampling sites, major rivers, and towns. Boundaries of Hexi Corridor are marked by dashed curves. Contours show elevation (in m); arrows show direction of groundwater flow. Rectangular box shows area enlarged in Figure 2.

View larger version (28K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 2. Area enlarged from Figure 1. Zhangye Basin is filled with Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments, while surrounding mountains consist of folded and faulted rocks of various ages. Bounding faults, marked by active seismicity and revealed by geophysical surveys, extend to depth of many kilometers. Numbers by epicenters refer to recent earthquakes: (1) 2003 M6.1, (2) 2003 M5.9, (3) 2004 M3.2, (4) 2004 M4.5, (5) 2004 M3.5, (6) 2006 M3.2. Contours show area and magnitude of water-table rise between 2003 and 2006 (courtesy of Ding Hongwei).

View larger version (28K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 3. A: Time history of monthly and annual precipitation at Qilian Station (site 5, Fig. 1) on northern slope of Qilian Mountains. B: Time history of discharge of Heihe River at Yingluo Gorge (site 2, Fig. 1), the exit of Heihe River from Qilian Mountains (Han et al., 2007). C: Time history of groundwater level at monitoring well near Yingluo Gorge. Note close similarity in seasonal changes between monthly precipitation and Heihe River discharge.

View larger version (18K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 4. D plotted against 18O for water samples from springs, Heihe River, and surface water in Zhangye Basin. Diamond with cross shows weighted average of precipitation in Zhangye; solid square with cross shows weighted average of Heihe River waters collected in winter. Both are adjacent to global meteoric water line (GMWL). Sizes of crosses show standard errors in D and 18O measurements. Crosses show data for Heihe River waters collected in fall, all of which are above GMWL. Least square fit to river-water data (dashed line) intersects GMWL at point marked by open circle. Data for springs (open squares) are close to least square fit to river-water data. Data for surface irrigation waters (open circles; from Chen et al., 2006) are on opposite side of GMWL.