Spatiotemporal changes of agricultural water footprint and its driving factors using the ARDL model in the Hexi corridor, China

Abstract

The water footprint theory was used to analyze the agricultural water footprint (AWF) and its spatiotemporal characteristics in the Hexi corridor, Northwest of China from 2002 to 2017. The AWF increased during 2002–2017. Meanwhile, the water footprint of cash crops rapidly increased from 10.08 billion m3 to 100.94 billion m3; however, the water footprint of grain production increased slowly and remained relatively stable. There were great differences in the water footprint of various agricultural products in twenty counties in the Hexi corridor. Furthermore, this study explored the equilibrium relationship between the gross domestic product (GDP), population, grain yield, fertilization, urbanization rate, and AWF using the Panel Pool Mean Group and autoregressive distributive lag (PMG/ARDL) model. Our findings demonstrated that economic growth, grain yield, and fertilization had a significant positive relationship with AWF, and population and the urbanization rate had a negative long-run but non-significant relationship with AWF. The panel causality analysis showed a one-way causal relationship between the AWF with population and urbanization rate. The grain yield, the rate of urbanization, and fertilization in the Hexi corridor need further improvements to ensure the sustainable development of water resources.