Quantifying Threshold Water Tables for Ecological Restoration in Arid Northwestern China

In arid northwestern China, as many inland areas around the world with arid or semi-arid climate, inland river flow recharges groundwater; vegetation pattern depends on the water table, which characterizes the landscapes of oasis, transition zone and desert, within different distances from an inland river. The water table conditions play an important role in water and land management-a high water table causes salinization within the oasis while a low water table causes desertification around the oasis. This study applies a theoretical-empirical method to calculating critical groundwater depths including the depth of critical groundwater level causing salinization (DCGS) and the depth of critical groundwater level causing desertification (DCGD); the calculations are validated with field observations in the Luocheng Irrigation District located in the middle reach of the Heihe River, an inland river of the northwestern China. Specifically, the calculated DCGS is 1.29 m for the case study area and the range of water table depth at the locations with saline soil is 0.5-1.2 m. The calculated DCGD for three vegetation communities, Nitraria tangutorum + Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch community, Tamarix chinensis + Phragmites australis community, and Alhagi sparsifolia + Phragmites communis, are 8.26, 11.26, and 13.26 m, respectively, basically within an observed range of 6.0-13.0 m in the study area. The critical depths can be used to design an engineering approach to control water tables and mitigate salinization and desertification problem for ecosystem restoration in the study region.