Soil water is a link between different water bodies. The study of soil water evaporation is of great significance to understand the regional hydrological process, promote environmental remediation in arid areas, and rationalize ecological water use. On the basis of soil water δ2H and δ18O data from April to October 2017 in the Xiying River basin in the upper reaches of the Qilian mountains, the lc-excess and Craig-Gordon model were applied to reflect the evaporating fractionation of soil water. The results show that the change in evaporation loss drives the enrichment of soil water isotopes. The signal of evaporative fractionation of soil water isotopes at different elevations has spatiotemporal heterogeneity. From the perspective of time dynamics, the evaporation loss of the whole region during the observation period was affected by temperature before July, while after July, it was controlled jointly by temperature and humidity, evaporation was weakened. Soil salt content and vegetation played an important role in evaporation loss. In terms of spatial dynamics, the soil moisture evaporation at the Xiying (2097 m) and Huajian (2390 m) stations in the foothills area is larger than that at the Nichan station (2721 m) on the hillside and Lenglong station (3637 m) on the mountain top. The surface soil water evaporation is strong, and the evaporation becomes weak with the increase of depth. The research has guiding significance for the restoration and protection of vegetation in arid areas and the formulation of reasonable animal husbandry policies.
Rapid population growth, economic development, and agricultural irrigation have increased the demand for water and energy over recent decades (Cooley et al., 2021). These demands are often met using dams that impound rivers to create water-storage facilities that affect more than 70% of the world's rivers (Grill et al., 2019). The cumulative global storage capacity exceeds one-sixth of the total annual discharge of rivers into the ocean (Messager et al., 2021). Despite the apparent benefits, the considerable cost of water consumption has attracted the attention of researchers worldwide (Arias et al., 2020;Chaudhari et al., 2021). In developing countries, rapid economic development adds to the proportion of hydropower generation and the irrigation needs from agricultural reservoirs (Wheeler et al., 2020). Reliable water resources are essential for maintaining agricultural production and ecosystem functions in inland river basins, which are ecologically fragile but often have high population densities (Li et al., 2021). Thus, it is necessary to schedule and allocate water resources through artificial storage and other methods (Jiang et al., 2021). Evaporation from water surfaces (e.g., reservoirs, lakes) is an integral part
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