Tracking footprint of hydrogeology research in China via scientific projects funded by the NSFC (1997–2013)

In order to track the footprint of the hydrogeology research in China during the past years, all the projects with the code of D0213 (hydrogeology, geothermic geosciences included) funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) from 1997 to 2013 were searched and analysed. The statistics results showed that, a total of 88 institutes were ever funded with a total of 462 projects with the gross amount of 214 million yuan, and Beijing and Wuhan were the two most important centres for the hydrogeology research. In detail, A few 211 Project & 985 Project universities were the main forces, followed by Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences and Chinese Academy of Sciences. Apart from the several traditional geological universities/colleges (China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Nanjing University, Jilin University, and Chang’an University) with outstanding performances, a few new forces from 211 Project & 985 Project universities also made good achievements with Beijing Normal University and Peking University standing out. Generally speaking, the focused scientific issues and related technologies included that but were not limited to, (1) Mechanism, control and remediation of groundwater/soil pollution were the most active fields, (2) Flow dynamics in saturated/unsaturated zone was still an interested topic, (3) Groundwater in hydrological cycle in different scales under climate change and human activities developed very quickly, (4) Engineering problems and disasters associated with groundwater aroused enormous attention, (5) Numerical modeling was still the most important means with wide application, and (6) Environmental tracing was a very active technique and new tracers were found and tried frequently