Large Amount Of Water Resources Research Articles

Identification of the critical transmission sectors and typology of industrial water use for supply-chain water pressure mitigation

The industrial system produces pressure on water resources by directly consuming the water needed for industrial production and by indirectly consuming water through intermediate inputs. To date, identifying the critical transmission sectors for supply-chain water resources pressure mitigation has been under-examined. To fill this gap in knowledge, we use a betweenness-based method in combination with the standard input–output table extended with water-resource sector accounts to identify the key transmission sectors using Zhangye City in the Heihe River Basin, China as an example. The results show that the sectors with low rankings of the production-based indicator do not consume large amounts of water resources to directly generate products, which demonstrates that these sectors have limited scope for reducing water-resource consumption. The results also indicate that those sectors having higher betweenness-based water use but lower consumption-based and production-based water use merit close attention because these sectors transmit relatively large amounts of water resources embodied in their intermediate inputs from water-intensive upstream industrial sectors. Consequently, improving production efficiency in these sectors has an indirect effect by lowering the consumption of upstream water resources. This study also shows that the betweenness-based indicator is able to provide additional information beyond that given by the usual metrics derived from the production and demand sides. Moreover, the typology of water use that we innovatively generate is able to inform corresponding and targeted sector-specific policies and strategies for mitigating water resources pressure.

Hydrologic Response of Climate Change in the Source Region of the Yangtze River, Based on Water Balance Analysis

Due to the large amount of water resources stored in glaciers, permafrost, and lakes, the source region of the Yangtze River (SRYR) is of great importance for the overall basin water flow. For this purpose, a state of art review and calculations were made for the period 1957–2013 using observed hydrological and meteorological data with a water balance approach. Actual evapotranspiration was calculated and validated by empirical formulas. Water storage change analysis was conducted with uncertainty boundaries using a 10-year moving window. Results show that temperature, precipitation, and actual evapotranspiration in the SRYR increased by 0.34 °C, 11.4 mm, and 7.6 mm per decade, respectively (significant at 0.05 probability level). Runoff appears to have increased at a rate of 3.3 mm per decade. The SRYR water storage in total has not changed significantly during the period, although the moving average is mostly below zero. Based on the water balance equation, the increase in calculated evapotranspiration is mainly due to the significantly increasing temperature. This in combination with increasing precipitation leads to a relatively stable water storage during the study period. Correlation analyses show that precipitation dominates runoff during the warm season (May to October), while temperature anomalies dominate the runoff during the cold season (November to April). The influence of temperature on runoff seems to enhance during the winter period.

Research on the Influencing Factors of Comprehensive Water Consumption by Impulse Response Function Analysis

Jiangsu is a major province located in the east of China, consuming a large amount of water resources. It is considered that improving the comprehensive water use efficiency has an important significance to achieve sustainable development of the economy in Jiangsu. Through extensive literature research and investigation of Jiangsu Province, this paper establishes comprehensive water use efficiency index system using water consumption per ten thousand dollar gross domestic product (WC/$104 GDP) as the research target. In the index system, resource factors such as surface water resources (SW), groundwater resources (GW), precipitation (PT), water resources per capita (PW), water consumption per capita (PC) and irrigation area per capita (PI) cannot be artificially altered. Furthermore, the variation amplitude of resource factors is very small. It shows that the linear regression model is not suitable to analyze the resource factors by changing the independent variables. In view of this situation, this paper introduces impulse response function on the basis of vector autoregressive model (VAR) to investigate the intrinsic link between resource factors and WC/$104 GDP in Jiangsu Province. The results show that resource factors have a great impact on WC/$104 GDP in Jiangsu, and the per capita water resources (PW) has the most significant impact.

Attribution of the vegetation trends in a typical desertified watershed of northeast China over the past three decades

AbstractDesertification is a serious environmental problem in north China that should be urgently addressed and prevented. Identifying the causes of vegetation trends that are closely related to desertification is prerequisite for a better control of desertification processes. In this study, the Xiliao River basin, a typical desertified watershed in northeast China, was selected as a case study. To partition the vegetation trends into climate‐induced and human‐induced trends, a linear regression model, piecewise regression model and a binary nonlinear regression analysis were employed, based on the long‐term remote measures of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and climate data. The results showed that the spatial pattern of the vegetation trends in the basin was highly heterogonous, although the climatic factors varied similarly. In the north, where natural vegetation dominates, the vegetation exhibited significant browning (−0.0015 year−1), and a significant changing point was observed in 2000. In the south, where cropland dominates, the vegetation exhibited significant greening (0.002 year−1). Approximately 82.7% of the area with a decreasing NDVI was attributed to climate variability. The main reason for the vegetation degradation was because of a multiyear reduction in precipitation from 1999 to 2011 rather than from an increase in the grazing size. Approximately 67.0% of the area with an increasing NDVI could be attributed to irrigation, which overexploited a large amount of water resources, even though significantly increasing air temperatures can promote vegetation greenness. Our findings have important management implications for grazing and agriculture in the context of controlling desertification and sustaining environment. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An important mechanism sustaining the atmospheric "water tower" over the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract. The Tibetan Plateau (TP), referred to as the "roof of the world", is also known as the "world water tower" because it contains a large amount of water resources and ceaselessly transports these waters to its surrounding areas. However, it is not clear how these waters are being supplied and replenished. In particular, how plausible hydrological cycles can be realized between tropical oceans and the TP. In order to explore the mechanism sustaining the atmospheric "water tower" over the TP, the relationship of a "heat source column" over the plateau and moist flows in the Asian summer monsoon circulation is investigated. Here we show that the plateau's thermal structure leads to dynamic processes with an integration of two couplings of lower convergence zones and upper divergences, respectively, over the plateau's southern slopes and main platform, which relay moist air in two ladders up to the plateau. Similarly to the CISK (conditional instability of the second kind) mechanism of tropical cyclones, the elevated warm–moist air, in turn, forces convective weather systems, hence building a water cycle over the plateau. An integration of mechanical and thermal TP forcing is revealed in relation to the Asian summer monsoon circulation knitting a close tie of vapor transport from tropical oceans to the atmospheric "water tower" over the TP.

The impact of changing environments on the runoff regimes of the arid Heihe River basin, China

This study analyzed the inter- and inner-annual variations of discharge regimes in the upper and mid reaches of the Heihe River basin. These variations then correlated with temperature and precipitation variations in the area. The differences between the runoff regimes at the upper and mid reaches were compared, and the human impacts on discharge variations in the Heihe River were discussed. The results indicate that in the upper reaches, the long-term trends and periods of discharge and precipitation correlate well. In the mid reaches, the discharge and temperature trends correlate well, and the short discharge and precipitation periods correlate well. Precipitation increases would generate more runoff in both the upper and mid reaches, but the effects of temperature increases on discharge are different in the upper and mid reaches. Temperature increases would enhance the glacial ablation processes and increase runoff in the upper reaches. However, temperature increases would increase the evaporation and decrease runoff in the mid reaches. After the 1980s, higher temperature enhanced snow and glacial melt, and increasing precipitation increased the discharge in the upper reaches. Although increasing precipitation increased some discharge, great human activities caused a notable discharge decrease in the 1990s in the mid reaches, especially during the spring to autumn when large amounts of water resources were used for irrigation. In summary, both precipitation and temperature impact the availability of water resources in the study area, and active and effective adaptation strategies should be developed to improve the efficiency of water resource exploration and to prevent the desertification processes in the arid Heihe River basin.