Abstract
Scientific evaluation of crop water use efficiency is of great significance for ascertaining water-saving potential and realizing efficient utilization of water resources. In this paper, we calculated the water footprint of crop growth, pollution water footprint and production water footprint of 14 cities in Liaoning Province, China, by using the water footprint theory, established the crop water use efficiency model of stochastic frontier distance function, and analyzed the spatial-temporal variation characteristics of crop water use efficiency (WUE), ecological WUE and production WUE. Results show that: (1) the average water footprint of crop growth was 1.714 × 109 m3, the ecological water footprint of crop was 6.26 × 108 m3, and the water footprint of crop production was 2.34 × 109 m3 from 2001 to 2017 for the whole province. (2) the WUE of crop growth was 0.821, the crop ecological WUE was 0.845 and crop production was 0.865, respectively. We concluded that Liaoning province can save 17.9% of crop consumption water, equivalent to 8.38 × 108 m3, 15.5% of ecological water, equivalent to 7.25 × 108 m3 and 13.5% of production water, equivalent to 6.32 × 108 m3 by strengthening the popularization of agricultural high-efficiency water use technology and improving the level of policy management. This research provides a basic support for the evaluation of crop water-saving potential with the stochastic frontier approach in other regions.
Highlights
Wastewater is a link that needs to be focused on in response to the current world water shortage
In view of the above researches, we found that the research methods only considered the relationship between agricultural water consumption and crop yield, which belongs to the calculation method of the single-factor agricultural water use efficiency (WUE)
There are two advantages to obtain the amount of crop water use based on the water footprint theory: one is to calculate the total amount of the water use in the crop production; the other is to subdivide crop water consumption into crop growth and pollutant dilution consumption, so as to know the consumption direction of water resources
Summary
Wastewater is a link that needs to be focused on in response to the current world water shortage. Wastewaters come from the water discharged from human activities and rainwater runoff, including sewage, industrial waste water, and early rain runoff, especially from agricultural production areas [1,2,3]. The global wastewater volume is high, and the world may face its deficiency in the future [4,5]. Agricultural water is the main source of water resource use, accounting for 85% of the water resource consumption [6,7]. In this field, its water-saving potential should not be underestimated. An important way of mitigating crop water resource consumption is by improving water use efficiency (WUE)
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