Integrated hydrogeological and hydrogeochemical dataset of an alpine catchment in the northern Qinghai–Tibet Plateau

Abstract

Climate warming has significantly changed the hydrological cycle in cold regions, especially in areas with permafrost or seasonal frost. Groundwater flow and its interactions with surface water are essential components of the hydrological process. However, few studies or modeling works have been based on long-term field observations of groundwater level, temperature, hydrogeochemistry, or isotopic tracers from boreholes due to obstacles such as remote locations, limited infrastructure, and harsh work conditions. In the Hulugou catchment, an alpine catchment in the headwater region of the Heihe River on the northern Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP), we drilled four sets of depth-specific wells and monitored the groundwater levels and temperatures at different depths. Surface water (including river water, glacier meltwater, and snow meltwater), precipitation, groundwater from boreholes, spring water, and soil water were sampled to measure the abundances of major and minor elements, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and stable and radioactive isotopes at 64 sites. This study provides a dataset of these groundwater parameters spanning 6 consecutive years of monitoring/measurements. These data can be used to investigate groundwater flow processes and groundwater–surface water interactions on the QTP under global climate change. The dataset provided in this paper can be obtained at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6296057 (Ma et al., 2021b) and will be subject to further updates.