Ping Wang

Chinese Academy of Sciences | CAS · Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources

s u m m a r y Groundwater plays a dominant role in the eco-environmental protection of arid/semi-arid areas. Under-standing sources and mechanisms of groundwater recharge in the Ejina Basin, an arid inland river basin in northwest China, is important for water resource planning in this ecologically sensitive area. In this study, 90 water samples we...

Aims Since 2000, the environmental flow controls project has been implemented in the lower Heihe River Basin, a typical arid inland river basin in northwest China, to restore the deteriorated ecological environment in this region. The aim of this study was to explore the impacts of groundwater fluctuations on vegetation dynamics. Our results can be...

Widely distributed in arid and semi-arid regions, phreatophytic roots extend into the saturated zone and extract water directly from groundwater. In this paper, we implemented a vegetation optimality model of root dynamics (VOM-ROOT) in the Noah land surface model with multi-parameterization options (Noah-MP LSM) to model the extraction of groundwa...

Despite the increasing Siberian river discharge, the sensitivity of streamflow to climate forcing/permafrost thawing is poorly quantified. Based on the Budyko framework and superposition principles, we detected and attributed the changes in streamflow regimes for the three great Siberian rivers (Ob, Yenisei, and Lena) during 1936-2019. Over the pas...

Understanding the impacts of climate warming on hydrogeochemical processes, particularly in areas dominated by permafrost, is crucial. However, the natural background levels of chemical components in eastern Siberian rivers from permafrost-dominated regions and their responses to climate warming have not been adequately quantified. This study aims...

Water quality degradation and eutrophication of lakes are global ecological and environmental concerns, especially shallow lakes. This study collected hydrochemical data from 2935 samples of the Chinese part of Xingkai (Khanka) Lake, based on 40 published papers spanning the period from 2001 to 2023. Using the water quality index (WQI), improved ge...

The Arctic river basins, among the most sensitive regions to climate warming, are experiencing rapid temperature rise and permafrost thawing that profoundly affect their hydrological and hydrochemical systems. However, our understanding of chemical export from Arctic basins to oceans remains limited due to scarce data, particularly in permafrost-do...

2017 年至 2023 年中国部分湖泊和水库中的地表水和沉积物中微塑料的研究数据， 重点探讨了微塑料在中国部分湖泊和水库 环境中的污染水平以及赋存特征。研究结果表明， 中国部分湖泊和水库环境中的微塑料丰度较高， 微塑料污染 水平高； 水体和沉积物中的微塑料颗粒以小粒径为主(粒径多小于 1 mm)， 颜色以无色透明为主， 主要类型包括 纤维、 碎片和薄膜， 主要聚合物是聚丙烯(PP)、 聚乙烯(PE)和聚氨酯(PU)； 湖泊和水库水体中微塑料总丰度与省 级生产总值和污水排放量显著正相关， 湖泊和水库沉积物中的微塑料丰度与人口、 污水排放量和农业生产总值 显著正相关； 不同地区湖泊和水库的主要污染来源存在差异， 人类活动强度是最重要的影响因素。研究对系统 评估中国湖泊和水库环境中的微塑料污染状...

The geochemical processes of groundwater in arid regions are generally influenced by both natural hydrological processes and human activities. However, impacts of water-rock interactions on groundwater recharge via hydrological processes, controlled by both intermittent river water flow and groundwater withdrawals, is still poorly understood. In th...

China’s massive wave of urbanization may be threatened by land subsidence. Using a spaceborne synthetic aperture radar interferometry technique, we provided a systematic assessment of land subsidence in all of China’s major cities from 2015 to 2022. Of the examined urban lands, 45% are subsiding faster than 3 millimeters per year, and 16% are subsi...

The rational evaluation of pollution control measures is crucial for advancing water pollution management, ensuring water quality, and creating high-standard urban environments. Currently the evaluation heavily relies on water quality indicators with little regard to the sense of gain of the people. In this paper, we proposed an objective indicator...

Under the background of rapid global warming, the hydrological regime in the Arctic river basins, where permafrost is widely developed, has changed significantly. These changes not only altered the local ecological environment, but also had far-reaching impacts on the global climate system and socio-economy. Therefore, the study of hydrological pro...

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) has a fragile ecosystem that is sensitive to climate change. Due to the amplifying effect of climate change, the QTP has experienced rapid warming and shifting precipitation in recent decades, profoundly impacting the local ecosystem. However, the specific details of how vegetation responds to these changes were uncl...

The terrestrial water storage anomaly (TWSA) is an important parameter for assessing the land water budget, and it interacts well with terrestrial ecosystems via complex hydrological processes. Recently, the decline in central Asian terrestrial water storage (TWS) has threatened the health of local ecosystems. Therefore, it is of great significance...

在全球变化背景下，全球陆地植被生态系统如何响应和适应日益加剧的干旱环境，即干旱胁迫下植被生态韧性的空间格局和演变机理，成为当前生态学和生态水文学研究的核心内容之一。近年来，围绕植被变化与水分胁迫关系的研究不胜枚举，对其机理的认识不断深入。然而，对于植被生态韧性的阐释仍存在较大的分歧和争议，主要原因之一是对生态韧性内涵的理解尚未统一。针对这一问题综合了国内外学者的观点，认为解析生态韧性不仅应当考虑干旱事件下的系统抵抗和恢复能力，更应从系统演化的角度解析变化环境下的系统应对与适应行为，即抵抗力、恢复力和适应性应该是衡量生态韧性的3个最重要的维度。围绕这3个主要维度梳理了国内外近期研究成果，从生态韧性特征的空间格局、影响机理以及适应策略方面，总结了学术界当前对生态韧性的主要认识和待解决的关键问题。...

Global dryland areas are expanding due to climate change, and this expansion is accompanied by an increased frequency and intensity of drought occurrences. The degree of water stress in drylands is projected to further increase in the future, thereby threatening dryland ecosystem sustainability. Groundwater is among the most important water resourc...

Climate warming globally has a profound effect on the hydrological regime, amplifying evapotranspiration and precipitation and accelerating the processes of snow melt and permafrost thaw. However, in the context of small river basins—those encompassing less than 10,000 km2—the response of the hydrological regime to climate change is intricate and h...

In the last few decades, the Mekong Delta coastlines have suffered serious erosion. Strong waves during the Northeast Monsoon are one of the main reasons for this. Many types of breakwaters with different structural components have been designed and built to mitigate coastline erosion. Vertical seawalls have been widely used, but they create reflec...

Study region: The Amu Darya River (ADR) basin in Central Asia. Study focus: To understand the spatiotemporal patterns and underlying driving mechanisms of river salinization in arid environments, this study gathered 50 years (1970-2019) of water chemistry data from 12 locations along the ADR. The variations in discharge and salinity were assessed b...

Since the early 2000s, China has carried out extensive “grain-for-green” and grazing exclusion practices to combat desertification in the desertification-prone region (DPR). However, the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of these practices remain unclear. We quantify and compare the changes in fractional vegetation cover (FVC) with economic a...

At present, the problem of climate change is becoming increasingly acute. This is especially pressing for Lake Baikal, a World Natural Heritage site. The Russian part of the Selenga watershed is a suitable site for climate change research. The study of changes in precipitation, runoff, and chemical runoff is important for sustainable water resource...

With the challenges of arid transboundary river water management among Central Asian countries, it is important to evaluate the water stress and propose practicable climate adaptation strategies. This study used the Syr Darya Basin (SDB) in a Central Asia data scarce region as the study area and, conducted the first quantified analysis of the spati...

Permafrost degradation leads to considerable changes in river ecosystems. The Eastern Siberian River Chemistry (ESRC) database was constructed to create a spatially extensive river chemistry database to assess climate warming-induced changes in freshwater systems in permafrost-dominated eastern Siberia. The database includes 9487 major ion (Na + ,...

Land evapotranspiration (ET) is a key factor in the hydrological cycle and is particularly sensitive to climate change. In the past few decades, the Pan-Arctic region has witnessed a strong warming trend, causing substantial changes in ground surface conditions. However, it remains less understood how ET varies across such a region. Here, we invest...

The climate is warming much faster than the global average at the northern mid–high latitudes, leading to intensified hydrological cycles. However, it is unclear whether the response of streamflow to climate change is uniform across river basins with areas of 10⁴–10⁵ km². In this study, monthly streamflow data from five river basins (Bol’shoy Patom...

Balancing socioeconomic development with water resources among cities is critical for the sustainable development of urban agglomerations. Despite this urgent need to analyse balanced development, a recognized method to measure and improve the balanced degree in urban agglomerations impacted by water resource constraints is still lacking. This stud...

Permafrost degradation under a warming climate is accelerating the hydrological processes in Arctic river basins. However, corresponding changes in river mineralization, riverine solute exports and their potential influencing factors are not fully understood. In this study, we selected six major Arctic rivers (Ob, Yenisei, Lena, Kolyma, Yukon and M...

Riparian evapotranspiration is an important process that constrains the water exchanges within a well-connected river–aquifer–vegetation hydrological system. In this study, we developed an extended analytical Dupuit–Forchheimer (DF) model to consider the additional water flow resistances due to both the vertical deformation of flow lines caused by...

Vegetation growth in drylands is highly constrained by water availability. How dryland vegetation responds to changes in precipitation and soil moisture in the context of a warming climate is not well understood. In this study, warm drylands in the temperate zone between 30 and 50° N, including North America (NA), the Mediterranean region (MD), Cen...

Climate warming is accelerating the release of voluminous organic carbon from thawing permafrost into the Arctic Ocean via riverine transport. However, the seasonal variations in riverine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) exports in Arctic river basins with different areal extents of permafrost and how changes in water temperature (Tw) impact seasonal...

The greening of the Arctic and pan-Arctic regions in recent decades has been widely confirmed, while the details regarding the greening feedback effects involving the water and energy cycles are still vague. Evapotranspiration (ET), a vital process in the water and energy cycles, strongly corresponds to vegetation activities. Hence, in this study,...

The northern mid-high latitudes experience climate warming much faster than the global average. However, the difference in the temperature change rates between permafrost and non-permafrost zones remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the temporal changes in temperature means and extremes across the Siberian lowlands (<500 m) over the past...

Given their high root plasticity, phreatophytes have flexible water use strategies and can dynamically adjust their rooting depth for the effective uptake of water from soils and shallow aquifers. By this strategy, phreatophytes are strongly ecologically resilient to water stress and thus are commonly grown in drylands. In this study, we used a mod...

Surface water–groundwater interactions in arid zones are characterized by water exchange processes in a complex system comprising intermittent streams/terminal lakes, shallow aquifers, riparian zone evapotranspiration, and groundwater withdrawal. Notable challenges arise when simulating such hydrological systems; for example, field observations are...

Groundwater runoff is an important component of river runoff and is sensitive to climate change. However, it is difficult to differentiate groundwater runoff from total river runoff by current base flow separation methods. Here, we propose a physically based model with a two‐pass digital filter for separating groundwater runoff from streamflow time...

Thoroughly understanding the security of water, energy and food (WEF) and the factors that influence them is essential for sustainable development management in any region. This study proposed a new analytical framework for WEF security evaluation in both individual sectors and the whole system, using the technique for order preference by similarit...

The increasing winter streamflow of major Arctic rivers has been well documented. However, the contribution of climate change to winter streamflow and associated mechanisms of streamflow generation during early, mid- and late winter are not fully understood. Among the Arctic rivers, we selected four rivers with relatively few dam effects (Lena, Kol...

The study of the transformation of substances in the basin of the Selenga River—the main tributary of Lake Baikal—under anthropogenic pressure and in the context of global climate change, is especially important for the lake, a globally important source of drinking water. The ecosystem of Lake Gusinoe is one of the key objects in the Selenga River...

The Northern Hemisphere is experiencing amplified warming and greening; however, the responses of greening to warming remain unclear in terms of the cumulative and time-lag effects of climate factors. We chose Siberia, a hotspot in the Northern Hemisphere, as a study area and identified the relationships between the enhanced vegetation index (EVI)...

Central Asia is one of many regions worldwide that face severe water shortages; nevertheless, water pollution in this region exacerbates the existing water stress and increases the risk of regional water conflicts. In this study, we perform an extensive literature review, and the data show that water pollution in Central Asia is closely linked to h...

Increased attention to precipitation changes in permafrost-dominated Siberia is promoted by intensified flooding under climate warming. The observed daily precipitation spanning 60 years (1959–2018) from 129 meteorological stations across the Siberian lowlands with elevations less than 500 m (50°N–70°N, 60°E–140°E) captures significant changes in b...

The Arctic is one of the rapidly changing regions remarkably influenced by global warming. Polar warming amplification (warming rate two times larger than the global mean) and rapidly declining sea ice lead to not only dramatic changes in the local environment, but also profound effects on weather and climate system in the mid-latitude. An in-depth...

Aims The vertical distribution of plant roots is a comprehensive result of plant adaptation to the environment. Limited knowledge on fine vertical root distributions and complex interactions between roots and environmental variables hinders our ability to reliably predict climatic impacts on vegetation dynamics. This study attempts to understand th...

In this study, data on surface water resources, precipitation, population, and gross domestic product for 43 provincial administrative units in the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor were used to systematically analyze the distribution characteristics and development potential of water resources in these regions by calculating the carrying cap...

As an important component of Arctic carbon cycle, riverine organic carbon exportation is very sensitive to climate change. In order to analyze the organic carbon output from 2004 to 2017 of Ob, Yenisei and Lena rivers in Siberia of Russia, river discharge and organic carbon data from the ArcticGRO (https://arcticgreatrivers.org/) was used in this s...

As an inland groundwater-fed oasis in northwest China, the Dunhuang West Lake Wetland (DWLW) has been threatened by decreasing groundwater recharge over the past several decades. Understanding recharging processes for DWLW is a key step for better protection of the oasis, but poorly studied. To this end, we carried out a comprehensive water chemist...

Precipitation is the main source of water resources in the Pan-Arctic regions. Temperature and precipitation are important indicators of climate change, and quantitative analysis of their spatial and temporal variations is important for a deeper understanding of the water cycling process in the Arctic and Pan-Arctic regions. In this study, we used...

The Hequ region of the upper Yellow River, eastern Tibetan Plateau, was selected as a case study for evaluating the artificial precipitation enhancement (APE) performance and for optimizing site selection. The distinctive precipitation-runoff process at large scale and in complex land surfaces and soil conditions was relatively considered in high-a...

This paper analyzes the change of water resources and the consequent water resources supply pressure in Uzbekistan by literatures reviewing and analyzing based on agricultural, remote sensing and hydro-meteorological reanalysis data. The analysis shows that since 1980, the average annual water withdrawals has increased from 5.9 billion m3 to 10.2 b...

Vegetation is a crucial component of terrestrial ecosystems, and its changes are driven mainly by a combination of climate change and human activities. This paper aims to reveal the relationship between vegetation and climate change by using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and standardized precipitation evapo-transpiration index (...

Groundwater is critical for supporting socioeconomic development but has experienced gradual decreases in recent decades due to rapid population growth and economic development throughout the world. In recent years, the utilization of transboundary groundwater resources has received extensive attention globally. Because transboundary aquifers do no...

The main purpose of this work is to evaluate diffuse groundwater recharge and its temporal dynamics at sites with different landscapes and soil profiles under observed and projected climate variability. Three typical sites with different landscapes and topsoil profiles were chosen for the field study. Field work consisted of pit development and soi...

Using the surface runoff data from the Global Runoff Data Base (GRDB) and the Arctic Great Rivers Observatory (ArcticGRO), this study analyzed the surface runoff variation characteristics of the six major river basins in the pan-Arctic region of Russia since 1930, and summarized the impacts of climate change and human activities on the surface runo...

Despite the significance of river leakage to riparian ecosystems in arid/semi-arid regions, a true understanding and the accurate quantification of the leakage processes of ephemeral rivers in these regions remain elusive. In this study, the patterns of river infiltration and the associated controlling factors in an approximately 150-km section of...

Water scarcity and ecological degradation as a result of the expansion of irrigated agriculture in arid regions have become global issues. A better understanding of the changes in crop water requirements (CWRs) is important for promoting sustainable development, particularly the water resource management of transboundary rivers. In this study, the...

Estimation of leakage from riverbeds is an important task to quantify the interaction of surface and groundwater and to perform effective water management under arid climate conditions, where the leakage from riverbeds helps to maintain the existence of riparian ecosystems. One of the methods to estimate the leakage rate from the riverbed is to use...

Predicting specific yield for a given aquifer remains a great challenge due to its dynamic characteristics, especially under periodic (e.g., seasonal and diurnal) groundwater level fluctuations. In this study, a dimensionless period of groundwater level fluctuations, which depends on the saturated hydraulic conductivity, the length of the groundwat...

The well-known White (1932) method based on diurnal water table observations has been widely applied to estimate groundwater evapotranspiration (ETG) from phreatophyte vegetation. One of the limitations of this method is its large uncertainties in quantifying the daily groundwater recovery rate (r), which is assumed to be equal to the average rate...

From a critical zone perspective, the present paper aims to present the magnitude of groundwater recharge under different agricultural land-use types, reveal the process of water and solute transport in thick vadose zone, evaluate the “time lag” effect of recharge, and underscore the role of thickening vadose zone in recharge. The results indicated...

Quantifying terminal-lake dynamics is crucial for understanding water-ecosystem-economy relationship across endorheic river basins in arid environments. In this study, the spatio-temporal variations in terminal lakes of the lower Heihe River Basin were investigated for the first time since the Ecological Water Diversion Project commenced in 2000. T...

One of the classical methods for estimating groundwater evapotranspiration (ETg) by phreatophytes is based on diurnal water table fluctuations (WTFs). This method was initially introduced by White in 1932 and has recently been improved. However, vegetation‐induced disequilibrium between groundwater and capillary fringe (CF) water is not considered...