Advanced search

Sciences in Cold and Arid Regions ›› 2015, Vol. 7 ›› Issue (6): 687-701.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1226.2015.00687

• ARTICLES • Previous Articles    

Water accounting for conjunctive groundwater and surface water irrigation sources: A case study in the middle Heihe River Basin of arid northwestern China

XueXiang Chang1, Bing Liu1, Hu Liu1, ShouBo Li2   

  1. 1. Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences;Linze Inland River Basin Research Station;Key Laboratory of Ecohydrology of Inland River Basin, CAS, Lanzhou, Gansu 730000, China;
    2. School of Remote Sensing, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210044, China
  • Received:2015-02-09 Revised:2015-05-13 Published:2018-11-23
  • Contact: XueXiang Chang E-mail:chxx@lzb.ac.cn
  • Supported by:
    This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project 40771079 and 41471024).

PDF (PC)

310

Abstract: Oases in arid northwestern China play a significant role in the region's economic stability and development. Overexploitation of the region's water resources has led to serious environmental consequences. In oases, irrigated agriculture is the primary consumer of water, but water shortages resulting from dramatically growing human needs have become a bottleneck for regional sustainable development, making effective management of the limited available water critical. Effective strategies must be formulated to increase agricultural productivity while reducing its environmental impacts. To support the development of such strategies, water use patterns were analyzed during the 2007 and 2008 growing seasons, from May to early October, to identify opportunities for improving water management using the Molden-Sakthivadivel water-accounting method, which combines groundwater and surface water into a single domain and can provide a good estimate of the uses, depletion, and productivity of water in a water basin context. The study area lies in Linze County, Gansu Province, China. In the study area, the inflow water resources consist of irrigation, precipitation, and soil water, which accounted for 89.3%, 8.9%, and 1.8% of the total in 2007, and 89.3%, 4.8%, and 5.9% in 2008, respectively. The irrigation depends heavily on groundwater, which accounted for 82.1% and 83.6% of the total irrigation water in 2007 and 2008, respectively. In 2007 and 2008, deep percolation accounted for 50.1% and 47.9% of the water outflow, respectively, with corresponding depleted fractions of 0.51 and 0.55, respectively. For the irrigation district as a whole, the water productivity was only 1.37 CNY/m3. To significantly increase crop water productivity and prevent depletion of the region's groundwater aquifer, it will be necessary to reduce the amount of water used for irrigation. Several water-saving agricultural practices are discussed and recommended.

Key words: water accounting, water irrigation sources, water management, water productivity, middle Heihe River Basin, northwestern China

Ahmadi SH, Andersen MN, Plauborg F, et al., 2010. Effects of irrigation strategies and soils on field grown potatoes: Yield and water productivity. Agricultural Water Management, 97: 1923-1930.
Allen RG, Pereira LA, Raes D, et al., 1998. Crop evapotranspiration: Guidelines for computing crop water requirements. FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper 56, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, pp. 293.
Cai X, Yang YE, Ringler C, et al., 2011. Agricultural water productivity assessment for the Yellow River Basin. Agricultural Water Management, 98: 1297-1306.
Chang X, Zhao W, Zhang Z, et al., 2006. Sap flow of the Gansu poplar shelterbelt in arid region of northwest China. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 138: 132-141.
Cheng G, Xiao D, Wang G, 1999. On the characteristics and building of landscape ecology in arid area. Advances in Earth Sciences, 14(1): 11-15.
Cheng R, Kang E, Zhao W, et al., 2004. Estimation of tree transpiration and response of tree conductance to meteorological variables in desert-oasis system of northwest China. Science in China (Ser. D: Earth Sciences), 47(Supp. 1): 9-20.
Feng Q, Cheng G, Endo KN, 2001. Towards sustainable development of the environmentally degraded River Heihe basin, China. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 46(5): 647-658. DOI: 10.1080/0262666010949.
Han DL, 2001. Type, area and distribution of oasis. In: Artificial Oases of Xinjiang. Beijing: Chinese Environmental Sciences Press, pp. 21-32.
Horst MG, Shamutalov SS, Goncalves JM, et al., 2007. Assessing impacts of surge-flow irrigation on water saving and productivity of cotton. Agricultural Water Management, 87: 115-127.
Hu SJ, Song YD, Tian CY, et al., 2007. Suitable scale of Weigan River plain oasis. Science in China (Ser. D: Earth Sciences), 50: 56-64.
Huang F, Li B, 2010. Assessing grain crop water productivity of China using a hydro-model-coupled-statistics approach, Part I: Method development and validation. Agricultural Water Management, 97: 1077-1092.
International Water Management Institute (IWMI), 1999. Development of effective water management institutions. Inception Report and Work Plan. International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka, pp. 73.
Jia B, 2000. Review and problems of oasis research. Advance in Earth Sciences, 15(4): 381-388.
Kang S, Liang Z, Pan Y, et al., 2000. Alternate furrow irrigation for maize production in an arid area. Agricultural Water Management, 45: 267-274.
Kang Y, Khan S, Ma X, 2009. Climate change impacts on crop yield, crop water productivity and food security: A review. Progress in Natural Science, 19: 1665-1674.
Li X, Wang Y, Liu L, et al., 2013. Effect of land use history and pattern on soil carbon storage in arid region of central Asia. PLoS ONE, 8(7): e68372. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0068372.
Liu CM, Zhang XY, Zhang YQ, 2002. Determination of daily evaporation and evapotranspiration of winter wheat and maize by large-scale weighing lysimeter and micro-lysimeter. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 111: 109-120.
Molden D, 1997. Accounting for Water Use and Productivity. SWIM Paper 1, International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka, pp. 1-25.
Molden D, Sakthivadivel R, 1999. Water accounting to assess use and productivity of water. Water Resources Development, 15: 55-71.
Molden D, Sakthivadivel R, Habib Z, 2001. Basin-level use and productivity of water: Examples from South Asia. Research Report 49, International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Pan X, Chao J, 2003. Theory of stability, and regulation and control of ecological system in oasis. Global Planet Change, 37: 287-295.
Peranginangina N, Sakthivadivel R, Scott NR, et al., 2004. Water accounting for conjunctive groundwater/surface water management: Case of the Singkarak-Ombilin River basin, Indonesia. Journal of Hydrology, 292: 1-22.
Postel S, 1999. Pillar of Sand: Can an Irrigation Miracle Last? London: W.W. Norton, pp. 1-30.
Renault D, Hemakumara M, Molden D, 2001. Importance of water consumption by perennial vegetation in irrigated areas of the humid tropics: Evidence from Sri Lanka. Agricultural Water Management, 46: 215-230.
Rieger S, Richner W, Streit B, et al., 2008. Growth, yield, and yield components of winter wheat and the effects of tillage intensity, preceding crops, and N fertilization. European Journal of Agronomy, 28: 405-411.
Shen Y, Wang J, Wu G, 2002. Oases as well as their sustainable development and constructions in China. Journal of Arid Land Resources and Environment, 16(1): 1-8.
Singh R, van Dam JC, Feddes RA, 2006. Water productivity analysis of irrigated crops in Sirsa district, India. Agricultural Water Management, 82: 253-278.
Su P, Du M, Zhao A, et al., 2002. Study on water requirement law of some crops and different planting mode in oasis. Agricultural Research in the Arid Areas, 20(2): 79-85.
Su Y, Zhao W, Su P, et al., 2007. Ecological effects of desertification control and desertified land reclamation in an oasis-desert ecotone in an arid region: A case study in Hexi Corridor, northwest China. Ecological Engineering, 29: 117-124.
Temesgen M, Savenije HHG, Rockström J, et al., 2012. Assessment of strip tillage systems for maize production in semi-arid Ethiopia: Effects on grain yield, water balance and water productivity. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, 47-48: 156-165.
Utseta A, Farréc I, Martíınez-Coba A, et al., 2004. Comparing Penman-Monteith and Priestley-Taylor approaches as reference-evapotranspiration inputs for modeling maize water-use under Mediterranean conditions. Agricultural Water Management, 66: 205-219.
Wang G, Cheng G, 2000. The characteristic of water resources and the changes of the hydrological process and environment in the arid zone of northwest China. Environmental Geology, 37(7): 783-790.
Wang J, Chang X, 2013. Change trend of the groundwater depth in Linze County in the middle reaches of Heihe River Basin in recent 30 years. Arid Zone Research, 30(4): 594-602.
Xia J, Zhang L, Liu CM, et al., 2007. Towards better water security in North China. Agricultural Water Management, 21: 233-247.
Xiong W, Holman I, Lin E, et al., 2010. Climate change, water availability and future cereal production in China. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 135: 58-69.
Yang R, Liu W, 2010. Nitrate contamination of groundwater in an agroecosystem in Zhangye Oasis, northwest China. Environmental Earth Science, 61: 123-129.
Yin Y, Wu S, Zheng D, et al., 2008. Radiation calibration of FAO56 Penman-Monteith model to estimate reference crop evapotranspiration in China. Agricultural Water Management, 95: 77-84.
Zhao W, Liu B, Zhang Z, 2010. Water requirements of maize in the middle Heihe River Basin, China. Agricultural Water Management, 97: 215-223.
Zhu Q, Ren J, Wang J, et al., 2003. River diversions for ecological restoration in inland river of China. China Water Resources, B03: 49-51.
Zwart SJ, Bastiaanssen WGM, 2004. Review of measured crop water productivity values for irrigated wheat, rice, cotton and maize. Agricultural Water Management, 69: 115-133.
[1] FangLei Zhong,AiJun Guo,XiaoJuan Yin,JinFeng Cui,Xiao Yang,YanQiong Zhang. Sociodemographic characteristics, cultural biases, and environmental attitudes: An empirical application of grid-group cultural theory in Northwestern China [J]. Sciences in Cold and Arid Regions, 2018, 10(5): 436-446.
[2] XiaoMei Peng, ShengChun Xiao, GuoDong Cheng, QuanYan Tian, HongLang Xiao. Microcoring and dendrometer-detected intra-annual wood formation of Populus euphratica in the Ejina Oasis,northwestern China [J]. Sciences in Cold and Arid Regions, 2017, 9(1): 54-66.
[3] JinKui Wu, ShiWei Liu, LePing Ma, Jia Qin, JiaXin Zhou, Hong Wei. Comparison analysis of sampling methods to estimate regional precipitation based on the Kriging interpolation methods: A case of northwestern China [J]. Sciences in Cold and Arid Regions, 2016, 8(6): 485-494.
[4] FuHui Jian, XiaoYu Song, LiLi Li, WenQi Gao. The evolution and enlightenment of water resources accounting from accounts to balance sheet [J]. Sciences in Cold and Arid Regions, 2016, 8(2): 156-162.
Viewed
Full text


Abstract

Cited
  Shared   
  Discussed   
No Suggested Reading articles found!