第七届青年地学论坛

论文已发表在Geology（第一作者河海大学雍斌教授），希望做分会口头报告交流。
Abstract: 
The Qiangtang Basin is a large endorheic basin in the inner part of the Tibetan Plateau,
and has been thought to be a dry region in contrast with the surrounding wet outer region
that feeds all the major Asian rivers. Combining surface hydrological data with modeling
and satellite data from 2002 to 2016 CE, our study reveals that an enormous amount of water,
∼54 ± 4 km3, is unaccounted for annually in the Qiangtang Basin. The amount of missing
water is comparable to the total annual discharge of the Yellow River. Data from the Gravity
Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission show little increase of local
terrestrial water storage. Thus, the missing water must have flowed out of the basin through
underground passages. Interpreting this result in the context of recent seismic and geological
studies of Tibet, we suggest that a significant amount of meteoric water in the Qiangtang
Basin leaks out by way of groundwater flow through deep normal faults and tensional fractures
along the nearly north-south rift valleys that are oriented subnormal to and cross the
surficial hydrological divide on the southern margin of the basin. Cross-basin groundwater
outflow of such a magnitude defies the traditional view of a basin-scale water cycle and leads
to a very different picture from the previous hydrological view of the Qiangtang Basin. This
finding calls for major rethinking of the regional water balance.

Tibetan Plateau; seismic and geological studies;,basin-scale water cycle; deep normal faults and tensional fractures