Increased Grain Crop Production Intensifies the Water Crisis in Northern China

Abstract

Growing crop production increases agricultural water consumption (AWC), but whether these two factors are matched in northern and southern China in the past two decades remains controversial. Here we used a remote sensing‐based water‐carbon coupling model combined with satellite observations to quantify the crop production, AWC, and water deficit changes in China over 2003–2018. We show that in northern China, crop production and AWC significantly (p < 0.05) increased, mainly due to planting area expansion, and the increasing rates were 2.6 and 6.2 times greater than those in southern China. The increasing irrigation demand in northern China greatly reduced the availability of stored terrestrial water and could not be met by the agricultural water supply in the next two decades. Our results show that the conflict between the limited agricultural water supply and the increasing irrigation demand cannot be resolved by the South‐to‐North Water Diversion Project, and better management in water resources and crop production is needed to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Strong Agricultural Resilience to 2022 Southern China Drought

“…This calculation is performed using the PML_V2 model (Gan et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2019). HI represents the harvest index for maize, wheat, and rice, which is constructed using data extracted from Chinese Statistical Yearbook (https://data.stats.gov.cn/) The yields obtained by this method have been verified to be credible (Li et al., 2023).…”

“…Amidst these changing conditions, the rising influence of human interventions, especially advancements in irrigation technology, has substantially shaped agroecosystems, with both natural factors and human activities now playing pivotal roles (Hou et al., 2022; Kath et al., 2019). This convergence has led to a complex interplay of factors influencing the resilience of agroecosystems (Li et al., 2023). Currently, the impact of increasing human interventions on agriculture systems remains unclear (Qu et al., 2020).…”

Identification of Actual Irrigated Areas in Tropical Regions Based on Remote Sensing Evapotranspiration

“…Through water balance analysis of irrigation districts, field ET can be further decomposed into ET from precipitation and ET from irrigation. By deducting the impact of precipitation of ET through the computation of effective precipitation, the residual change in ET is attributed to irrigation-induced effective ET [23]:…”