In recent years, excessive exploitation of groundwater has caused many environmental, geological and ecological problems, so artificial recharge has been adopted in many places. However, whether artificial groundwater recharge will lead to negative effects on groundwater environment needs further research. In this study, water quality data was collected from August 13, 2012 when the recharge began, to January 16, 2013 to study attenuation of nitrate in a deep confined aquifer during artificial recharge process. In this deep confined aquifer, the attenuation of nitrate was dominated by denitrification. The pH, electron donor, temperature, and dissolved oxygen (DO) which can affect denitrification were studied. The results showed that the pH and electron donor had basically no influence on nitrate attenuation, which was mainly influenced by water temperature and DO in this study. During the recharge process, because of decrease of water temperature and increase of DO, the half-life of nitrate increased rapidly after a stable period.

groundwater  /  artificial recharge  /  nitrate