An Analysis of Ecological Effects on Intake Areas Along the Way of Large Cross-Basin Water Transfer Projects

The South-North Water Transfer project is a super-huge infrastructural project to relieve the severe shortage of water sources in North China. It addresses the disharmony between the distribution of China’s water resources and the location of social productive force by the cross-basin rational water resources allocation. Its mid-route involves the four provinces (direct-controlled municipalities), namely, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and Henan, which had a severe shortage of water resources in the Haihe River Basin. Most of regions with surface water scarcity in this intake area only met their water demand by over-extraction of groundwater for a long time in order to maintain social and economic development. As a result, the groundwater level declined massively, causing a series of ecological, environmental and geological problems. The Mid-route was put into operation in 2014, and by the end of 2016 it had transported 6.72 billion cubic meters of water to the intake areas totally. This paper gives a comparative analysis on the changes of groundwater (water level, funnel area and buried depth), water quality of rivers and lakes and water environment in this intake area in two periods (2011--2013 and 2014--2016), that is, before and after the mid-route was put into operation, and studies the effects of the South-North Water Transfer Project after its operation on the recovery of ecological system in the intake area.