Groundwater Quality in Agricultural Lands Near a Rapidly Urbanized Area, South China

Lingxia Liu, Shihua Qi and Wenzhong Wang
Additional contact information
Lingxia Liu: School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Shihua Qi: School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Wenzhong Wang: School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 4, 1-11

Abstract: Understanding the groundwater quality and its factors is a key issue in the context of the use and protection of groundwater resources in agricultural areas near urbanized areas. This study assessed the groundwater quality in agricultural areas in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) by a fuzzy synthetic evaluation method and determined the main factors controlling the groundwater quality by principal component analysis (PCA). Results showed that approximately 85% of groundwater sites in agricultural lands in the PRD were good-quality (drinkable). Drinkable groundwater was 95% and 80% in fissured aquifers and porous aquifers, respectively. Poor-quality groundwater in porous aquifers was controlled by four factors according to the PCA, including the seawater intrusion; the lateral recharge and irrigation of surface water and geogenic sources for As, Fe, NH 4 + , and Mn; the wastewater infiltration; and the geogenic sources for iodide. By contrast, another four factors, including the infiltration of wastewater and agricultural fertilizers, the geogenic sources for heavy metals, the geogenic sources for iodide, and the irrigation of contaminated river water, were responsible for the poor-quality groundwater in fissured aquifers. Therefore, in the future, the groundwater protection in agricultural lands in the PRD should be strengthened because the majority of groundwater in these areas was good-quality and suitable for drinking and agricultural purposes. In addition, poor-quality groundwater in agricultural lands in the PRD was a small proportion and negligible because the factors for poor-quality groundwater are complicated.

Keywords: groundwater quality; agricultural areas; Pearl River Delta; wastewater infiltration; geogenic sources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1783/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/4/1783/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:4:p:1783-:d:498168

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().