Floating on groundwater: Insight of multi-source remote sensing for Qaidam basin

Situated in the north of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Qaidam Basin experiences limited precipitation and significant evaporation. Despite these conditions, it stands out as one of the most densely distributed lakes in China. The formation of these lakes is controversial: whether the lake water primarily originates from local precipitation or external water sources. To address this issue, this paper explores the recharge sources of lakes in the Qaidam Basin and the circulation patterns of groundwater from a remote sensing perspective. Based on deep learning networks, we optimized the soft object regions of the Object-Contextual Representations Network (OCRNet) and proposed the Remote·Sensing Adaptive-Improved OCRNet (RSA-IOCRNet). Compared with seven other networks, RSA-IOCRNet obtained better experimental results and was used to construct an area sequence of 16 major lakes in the Qaidam Basin. Combined with multi-source data, the comprehensive analysis indicates no significant correlation between climatic factors and lake changes, while an obvious correlation between lakes and groundwater changes in the eastern Qaidam, consisting with the results of the field survey. Deep-circulating groundwater recharges numerous Qaidam lakes through upwelling from fault zones, such as Gasikule Lake and Xiaochaidan Lake. Groundwater in the Qaidam Basin is more depleted in hydrogen-oxygen isotope characteristics than surface water in the basin, but similar to some river water in the endorheic Tibetan Plateau. This indicates that Tibetan seepage water, estimated at approximately 540 billion m³/a, is transported through the Qaidam Basin via deep circulation. Moreover, it rises to recharge the groundwater and lakes within this basin through fracture zones, extending to various arid and semi-arid regions such as Taitema Lake. This work provides a new perspective on the impact of deep groundwater on lakes and water circulation in these areas.