Groundwater resource sustainability faces significant challenges due to groundwater overdraft and waterlogging. Here we propose a novel framework for evaluating the sustainability of groundwater resources. The framework incorporates a dynamic calculation of the ecological groundwater depth (EGWD) at the grid scale, considering multiple protective targets. To quantitatively evaluate the groundwater sustainability, we utilize reliability, resilience, and vulnerability, to measure the frequency, duration, and extent of unsatisfactory conditions. We apply this framework to the lower part of Tao’er River Basin in China. During the non-growth period and growth period, the upper thresholds of the EGWD range from 1.16 to 2.05 meters and 1.16 to 4.05 meters, respectively. The lower thresholds range from 6.28 to 33.54 meters and 4.87 to 30.72 meters, respectively. Future climate change improves reliability performances in regions with deep groundwater depths. Although the precipitation infiltration increases in future scenarios, prolonged duration and enhanced intensity of extreme climate events lead to decreased resilience and vulnerability performances under climate change. The proportion of areas with resilience values less than 1/12 expands to 2~3 times that of the historical scenario. Furthermore, we observe that more areas face the dual challenges of groundwater depletion and waterlogging under future climate change, particularly in high-emission scenarios. This study enhances understanding of groundwater resource sustainability by considering the spatial-temporal distribution of the EGWD, climate change impacts, and the identification of key regions for management. The insights can inform the development of effective strategies for sustainable groundwater resource management.

Iron hydroxides is one of the main components of groundwater aquifer recharge clogging. Different concentrations of iron hydroxides lead to different type of clogging. Under constant flow rate, cake filtration was usually had better agreement with all the different concentration experimental results for typical single mode of clogging model. As the combined mode, the intermediate-standard and cake-intermediate models were more effective in description of the experimental data, and the combined model had more accurately fit result than the single mode model. Contributions analysis indicated that the cake filtration was the dominant clogging mechanisms for higher concentration and intermediate blocking was the dominant clogging mechanisms for lower concentration. Therefore, considering sequential intermediate blocking and cake filtration, an improved cake filtration model based on Hagen-Poseuille equation and Darcy's law was proposed. The improved model which had two model parameters, namely intermediate blocking coefficient and cake filtration coefficient are obtained by minimizing the error involved between calculated and experimental flux data. The experiment data of intermediate iron concentration was used to execute the verification model to derive two parameters which will be used to predict clogging laws of low and high iron concentration conditions, and the predicted results were fitted by experimental data. Comparing the prediction fitting error of the improved model, the result shows that it is more accurate and flexible than the original cake filtration model. Therefore, the results of the modified model can provide a basis for the subsequent use of backwash and other means to solve the blockage of colloids or complexes, thus improving the service life of the recharge facilities and saving the economic cost of the recharge.