An Introduction to Chuzhou Hydrological Experimental Site in China.

Hydrology, to date, has confronted its developmental bottleneck due to lack of newmonitoring and experimental data for hydrological processes in watersheds. Fortunately, newconcepts and techniques have been emerging to better meet the demands in the acquisition ofnew monitoring and experimental data. In addition, some artificial experimentalcatchments or watersheds, whose boundaries and inner structures can be designed anddefined in advance, have been established to investigate hydrological processes underwell-controlled conditions. In order to clarify the mechanism and regularity ofwatershed hydrological cycle, this study designs hydrological experiments withcoupled natural and artificial system using two-direction multi-scale approach, i.e.upward and downward. Thus, hydrological experiments at Huashan Watershed inChuzhou City, representative of the low-altitude warm region in China, are designedand being performed by adopting new and advanced monitoring techniques andequipments. Within Huashan Watershed with a drainage area of 80.0 km2, two representativewatersheds are selected: Sanchahe Watershed (17.6 km2) and Huangwa Watershed (2.6 km2).Four smaller catchments act as critical zone experimental blocks, including WangyingCatchment (0.27 km2), Gaochong Catchment (0.08 km2), Nandadish Catchment (0.008 km2)and Hydrohill Catchment (artificial, 0.0005km2). These catchments or watersheds jointogether to form an excellent multi-scale experimental system, including artificial and naturalexperimental blocks. At the outlets of Wangying, Gaochong, Huangwa, Sanchahe, andHuashan watersheds, V-notch weirs grooves and hydrological cables have been combined toobserve total stream discharges. Hydrohill and Nandadish catchments have been wellinstrumented to automatically measure hydrological elements such as precipitation,discharge, soil moisture, groundwater level, and evapotranspiration with high precision. Inaddition to the above measurements of water quantity related hydrological elements,precipitation, stream water, soil water, and groundwater in Hydrohill Catchment,Nandadish Catchment, Sanchahe Watershed and Huashan Watershed are sampled atdifferent location through water sampling systems designed and manufactured byourselves to determine the δ2H, δ18O, EC, pH, DO, and concentration of mainions. Hopefully, the experimental work and results in this site may push forward the emergenceof new data, new discoveries and new ideas for the development of hydrology, especiallyhydrological models. Key words: hydrological experiment; Nandadish; Hydrohill; Chuzhou HydrologicalExperimental Site; coupled natural and artificial system Acknowledgements: This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundationof China (No. 91647203, 91647111, 41330854 and 41371063) and the Science Foundation ofNanjing Hydraulic Research Institute (No. Y516027, Y516032 and Y517016). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]