Vertical Displacements Driven by Groundwater Storage Changes in the North China Plain Detected by GPS Observations
Renli Liu 
1
School of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
2
Hubei Subsurface Multi-Scale Imaging Key Laboratory, Institute of Geophysics & Geomatics, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan 430074, China
3
School of Geodesy and Geomatics, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
4
Institute of Seismology, China Earthquake Administration & Hubei Earthquake Administration, Wuhan 430071, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Remote Sens. 2018, 10(2), 259; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10020259
Received: 19 December 2017 / Revised: 1 February 2018 / Accepted: 4 February 2018 / Published: 7 February 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Constellation Global Navigation Satellite Systems: Methods and Applications)
The North China Plain (NCP) has been experiencing the most severe groundwater depletion in China, leading to a broad region of vertical motions of the Earth’s surface. This paper explores the seasonal and linear trend variations of surface vertical displacements caused by the groundwater changes in NCP from 2009 to 2013 using Global Positioning System (GPS) and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) techniques. Results show that the peak-to-peak amplitude of GPS-derived annual variation is about 3.7~6.0 mm and is highly correlated (R > 0.6 for most selected GPS stations) with results from GRACE, which would confirm that the vertical displacements of continuous GPS (CGPS) stations are mainly caused by groundwater storage (GWS) changes in NCP, since GWS is the dominant component of total water storage (TWS) anomalies in this area. The linear trends of selected bedrock-located IGS CGPS stations reveal the distinct GWS changes in period of 2009–2010 (decrease) and 2011–2013 (rebound), which are consistent with results from GRACE-derived GWS anomalies and in situ GWS observations. This result implies that the rate of groundwater depletion in NCP has slowed in recent years. The impacts of geological condition (bedrock or sediment) of CGPS stations to their results are also investigated in this study. Contrasted with the slight linear rates (−0.69~1.5 mm/a) of bedrock-located CGPS stations, the linear rates of sediment-located CGPS stations are between −44 mm/a and −17 mm/a. It is due to the opposite vertical displacements induced by the Earth surface’s porous and elastic response to groundwater depletion. Besides, the distinct renewal characteristics of shallow and deep groundwater in NCP are discussed. The GPS-based vertical displacement time series, to some extent, can reflect the quicker recovery of shallow unconfined groundwater than the deep confined groundwater in NCP; through one month earlier to attain the maximum height for CGPS stations nearby shallow groundwater depression cones than those nearby deep groundwater depression cones.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
GPS; GRACE; vertical displacement; groundwater storage
▼
Show Figures
Graphical abstract
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Liu, R.; Zou, R.; Li, J.; Zhang, C.; Zhao, B.; Zhang, Y. Vertical Displacements Driven by Groundwater Storage Changes in the North China Plain Detected by GPS Observations. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 259.
Show more citation formats
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
