As in many regions across the world, southeastern Kazakhstan is subjected to ongoing water-resource depletion. The livestock sector is already a major natural water resource consumer, with groundwater use becoming its water supply strategy. Remote pasture infrastructure development requires new water resources to allow pasture area circulation. The distant pastures in the middle reach of the Aksu River consist of three pastures, with a total area of 32,450 ha and a permissible number of 3245 livestock heads. The HYDRUS-1D water transport model and MODFLOW groundwater-flow model simulated complex water infrastructure prospect hydrogeological scenarios to allow the consumption of 302.4 m³ per day for livestock keeping on pasturelands. During pumping for livestock watering, projected production well drawdowns were quantitatively evaluated. The findings show that the projected pumping flow rate equals 288 m³/day during the water consumption season and 95 m³/day outside the water consumption season. While the production wells on pastures No. 2 and No. 3 can be considered reliable, on pasture No. 1, an additional production well is needed. To maintain the production wells’ drawdowns to less than 6 m, a projected pumping flow rate reduction to 216 m³/day and 70 m³/day, respectively, is required.

The challenge of a good quality drinking water supply to southeastern Kazakhstan’s local population from far-away natural surface water sources motivates groundwater utilization from local aquifers. To prevent groundwater resource deficits, artificial groundwater recharge is needed. To this end, infiltration and clogging processes were evaluated through comprehensive field research in southeastern Kazakhstan’s typical river drainage basin (Aksu experimental site). The infiltration scenario included constructed mini pools and their typical soil profile clogging and silting processes. The local aquifer unsaturated and upper saturated zones underwent a detailed study of water balance, hydrodynamic setting, and filtration properties. The research results suggest that the infiltration rate decreased from 15 m/day until the saturation steady state and remained at 0.75 m/day until the end of the experiment. In summer, clogging layers with thicknesses ranging from 3 mm for the clayey silt layer to 6 mm for muddy clay began to form at the mini pools nearly one month after the test began. During infiltration, the mini pools’ upper soil layer dirt-holding capacity varied from 3.72 to 5.25 kg/m². The field study results serve as a factual basis for artificial replenishment system design and groundwater replenishment methodology optimization in southeastern Kazakhstan and similar regions.