The Technical Program for Water
There are serious water supply problems over some 500,000 km2 of southwest China’s karst region, impacting as many as 100 million, mostly rural, residents. Water scarcity here is an under-appreciated problem, as this is in an area of generally abundant rainfall, though there is a prolonged dry season that typically occurs between September and April. The main problem is that in these karst areas, especially during the dry season, surface water is limited or even absent over large areas, and the region’s water instead flows as underground rivers that can be hundreds of meters below ground. Drilling wells, where the equipment is available, can be difficult because wells that miss the main river-bearing conduits by even a few meters can produce limited amounts of water.
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In collaboration with infrastructure building at the Southwest University of China (SWUC), and as a training vehicle, two karst hydrogeology field demonstration and training projects will be developed at these sites:
Additionally, as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is an indispensible tool for spatial data analysis that will be an important component of the work on both the water and coal-related air quality issues, the CEHP includes a number of GIS-related projects.
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