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This study analyzes the influence of local and regional climatic factors on the stable isotopic composition of rainfall in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD) as part of the Asian monsoon region. It is based on 1.5 years of weekly rainfall samples. In the first step, the isotopic composition of the samples is analyzed by local meteoric water lines (LMWLs) and single-factor linear correlations. Additionally, the contribution of several regional and local factors is quantified by multiple linear regression (MLR) of all possible factor combinations and by relative importance analysis. This approach is novel for the interpretation of isotopic records and enables an objective quantification of the explained variance in isotopic records for individual factors. In this study, the local factors are extracted from local climate records, while the regional factors are derived from atmospheric backward trajectories of water particles. The regional factors, i.e., precipitation, temperature, relative humidity and the length of backward trajectories, are combined with equivalent local climatic parameters to explain the response variables delta O-18, delta H-2, and d-excess of precipitation at the station of measurement. The results indicate that (i) MLR can better explain the isotopic variation in precipitation (R-2 = 0.8) compared to single-factor linear regression (R-2 = 0.3); (ii) the isotopic variation in precipitation is controlled dominantly by regional moisture regimes (similar to 70 %) compared to local climatic conditions (similar to 30 %); (iii) the most important climatic parameter during the rainy season is the precipitation amount along the trajectories of air mass movement; (iv) the influence of local precipitation amount and temperature is not sig-nificant during the rainy season, unlike the regional precipitation amount effect; (v) secondary fractionation processes (e.g., sub-cloud evaporation) can be identified through the d-excess and take place mainly in the dry season, either locally for delta O-18 and delta H-2, or along the air mass trajectories for d-excess. The analysis shows that regional and local factors vary in importance over the seasons and that the source regions and transport pathways, and particularly the climatic conditions along the pathways, have a large influence on the isotopic composition of rainfall. Although the general results have been reported qualitatively in previous studies (proving the validity of the approach), the proposed method provides quantitative estimates of the controlling factors, both for the whole data set and for distinct seasons. Therefore, it is argued that the approach constitutes an advancement in the statistical analysis of isotopic records in rainfall that can supplement or precede more complex studies utilizing atmospheric models. Due to its relative simplicity, the method can be easily transferred to other regions, or extended with other factors. The results illustrate that the interpretation of the isotopic composition of precipitation as a recorder of local climatic conditions, as for example performed for paleorecords of water isotopes, may not be adequate in the southern part of the Indochinese Peninsula, and likely neither in other regions affected by monsoon processes. However, the presented approach could open a pathway towards better and seasonally differentiated reconstruction of paleoclimates based on isotopic records.
Groundwater transit time is an essential hydrologic metric for groundwater resources management. However, especially in tropical environments, studies on the transit time distribution (TTD) of groundwater infiltration and its corresponding mean transit time (mTT) have been extremely limited due to data sparsity. In this study, we primarily use stable isotopes to examine the TTDs and their mTTs of both vertical and horizontal infiltration at a riverbank infiltration area in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD), representative of the tropical climate in Asian monsoon regions. Precipitation, river water, groundwater, and local ponding surface water were sampled for 3 to 9 years and analysed for stable isotopes (delta O-18 and delta H-2), providing a unique data set of stable isotope records for a tropical region. We quantified the contribution that the two sources contributed to the local shallow groundwater by a novel concept of two-component lumped parameter models (LPMs) that are solved using delta O-18 records. The study illustrates that two-component LPMs, in conjunction with hydrological and isotopic measurements, are able to identify subsurface flow conditions and water mixing at riverbank infiltration systems. However, the predictive skill and the reliability of the models decrease for locations farther from the river, where recharge by precipitation dominates, and a low-permeable aquitard layer above the highly permeable aquifer is present. This specific setting impairs the identifiability of model parameters. For river infiltration, short mTTs (<40 weeks) were determined for sites closer to the river (<200 m), whereas for the precipitation infiltration, the mTTs were longer (>80 weeks) and independent of the distance to the river. The results not only enhance the understanding of the groundwater recharge dynamics in the VMD but also suggest that the highly complex mechanisms of surface-groundwater interaction can be conceptualized by exploiting two-component LPMs in general. The model concept could thus be a powerful tool for better understanding both the hydrological functioning of mixing processes and the movement of different water components in riverbank infiltration systems.