Land Use/Cover Change in the Middle Reaches of the Heihe River Basin over 2000-2011 and Its Implications for Sustainable Water Resource Management

Abstract

The Heihe River Basin (HRB) is a typical arid inland river basin in northwestern China. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the downstream flow in the HRB declined as a result of large, artificial changes in the distribution of water and land and a lack of effective water resource management. Consequently, the ecosystems of the lower reaches of the basin substantially deteriorated. To restore these degraded ecosystems, the Ecological Water Diversion Project (EWDP) was initiated by the Chinese government in 2000. The project led to agricultural and ecological changes in the middle reaches of the basin. In this study, we present three datasets of land use/cover in the middle reaches of the HRB derived from Landsat TM/ETM+ images in 2000, 2007 and 2011. We used these data to investigate changes in land use/cover between 2000 and 2011 and the implications for sustainable water resource management. The results show that the most significant land use/cover change in the middle reaches of the HRB was the continuous expansion of farmland for economic interests. From 2000 to 2011, the farmland area increased by 12.01%. The farmland expansion increased the water resource stress; thus, groundwater was over-extracted and the ecosystem was degraded in particular areas. Both consequences are negative and potentially threaten the sustainability of the middle reaches of the HRB and the entire river basin. Local governments should therefore improve the management of water resources, particularly groundwater management, and should strictly control farmland reclamation. Then, water resources could be ecologically and socioeconomically sustained, and the balance between upstream and downstream water demands could be ensured. The results of this study can also serve as a reference for the sustainable management of water resources in other arid inland river basins.

Hydrological Cycle in the Heihe River Basin and Its Implication for Water Resource Management in Endorheic Basins

“…Since its implementation, the ecosystems in downstream areas of the HRB have been considerably restored (Cheng, Li, et al, 2014). However, the cropland area has also increased in both the midstream and downstream areas, which has a negative effect because cropland expansion results in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 10.1002/2017JD027889 overextraction of groundwater and the illegal use of surface water (Hu, Lu, Li, Wang, Guo, 2015;. Other ecosystem rehabilitation projects, such as afforestation in the upstream area and wetland restoration in the midstream area (Wang & Ma, 2016), have also been implemented in the past 10 years.…”

An Empirical Study on Sustainable Agriculture Land Use Right Transfer in the Heihe River Basin

“…Historically, it has been an agricultural area with many irrigation canals that have been built to maintain the livelihoods with limited water resources [21]. According to [22,23], the agricultural land in HRB has an annual expansion rate larger than 1%, lasting for more than 25 years from 1986 to 2011, because of the local economic development. In HRB, the Zhangye district, located in the middle reach of the Heihe river (See Figure 1b), is one of the places that has seen the largest agriculture land expansion since 1986 [22].…”

“…In Gaotai County, we mainly focus on two towns, Nanhua and Luotuocheng (NH, LTC), in which we have collected substantial data from each village for an analysis (see the data collection spots in Figure 1b). We also include Xuanhua Although this area has been rapidly developed, the large expansion of agricultural land in Zhangye district has already suppressed the current oasis ecosystem and groundwater, which potentially threatens the sustainable development of HRB [23,[27][28][29]. Nonetheless, Zhangye district is still planned to be the second largest agricultural exploitation area with a new high technological industry throughout the country [30].…”

Assessing Green and Blue Water: Understanding Interactions and Making Balance between Human and Nature

“…The data used in this study are grouped 20 into two categories. The first category is the data for model setup and initial parameterization, which includes Digital Elevation Model (DEM) (Farr and Kobrick, 2000), land use (Hu et al, 2015a(Hu et al, , 2015bZhong et al, 2015), soil type (Dai et al, 2013;Wei et al, 2013), irrigation system (Hu et al, 2008), river network and so on. These data are essential for the model to define the topography, drainage system, boundary conditions, vertical segmentation of the subsurface and so on.…”