Study on agricultural cultivation development layout based on the matching characteristic of water and land resources in North China Plain

Abstract

The North China Plain is the main producing area of winter wheat in China. Due to the relatively poor condition of water resources, the competition of water between industry and agriculture is fierce. The increasing shortage of water resources has led to serious overexploitation of groundwater in some areas. Agricultural development is faced with severe challenges. In order to ensure regional food security and sustainable winter wheat planting, 52 cities of North China Plain (NCP), in the following of the paper, use the shorted name NCP，were taken as research units to analyze the matching characteristics of agricultural water and land resources, so as to reveal the direction of irrigated agriculture development and winter wheat suitable planting layout considering their balance in future. The paper firstly analyzed the cultivated area determined by water resource and irrigation development by agricultural available water, and then pointed out the direction of water-suited planting layout of winter wheat. The results showed that: 1) the Gini coefficient showed an increasing trend, which indicated that the area of cultivated land and irrigation area supported by water resources have nearly reached the upper limit. The large-scale extension of both cultivated and irrigation area is impossible under the restriction of water. 2) The amount of agricultural available water resources per unit of effective irrigation area and the effective precipitation increased gradually from north to south in the NCP, but the spatial distribution of water requirement of winter wheat in its growth period changed in the opposite way. This indicated the poor spatiotemporal match between winter wheat planting and water resources, leading to the cost of spending more water to maintain wheat production. 3), The further development of irrigation and the water-suited planting of winter wheat should pay attention to the southern part of the plain with rich water (such as southern Henan Province, Jiangsu Province, Anhui Province, etc.) to ensure the regional agricultural development. That is of great significance to the regional sustainable development, water shortage alleviation and national grain safety.