Stable water isotope monitoring network of different water bodies in Shiyang River basin, a typical arid river in China

Abstract

Ecosystems in arid areas are fragile and are easily disturbed by various natural and human factors. As natural tracers widely exist in nature, stable isotopes can be valuable for studying environmental change and the water cycle. From 2015 to 2020, we took the Shiyang River basin, which has the highest utilization rate of water resources and the most prominent contradiction of water use, as a typical demonstration basin to establish and improve the isotope hydrology observation system. The data in the observation system are classified by water type (precipitation, river water, lake water, groundwater, soil water, and plant water). Six observation systems with stable isotopes as the main observation elements have been built. These include river source region, oasis region, reservoir channel system region, oasis farmland region, ecological engineering construction region, and salinization process region; meteorological and hydrological data have also been collected. We will gradually improve the various observation systems, increase the data of observation sites, and update the data set yearly. We can use these data to research the continental river basin ecological hydrology, such as surface water evaporation loss, landscape river water cycle impact of the dam, dam water retention time, oasis farmland irrigation methods, and the atmosphere, such as the contribution of inland water circulation to inland river precipitation, climate transformation, below-cloud evaporation effect, and extreme climate events, which provides a scientific basis for water resources utilization and ecological environment restoration in the arid area. The data sets are available at https://doi.org/10.17632/vhm44t74sy.1 (Zhu, 2022).