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Arid Land Geography ›› 2021, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (5): 1417-1426.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000–6060.2021.05.22

• Earth Information Sciences • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Accurate calculation of water resources carrying status in arid areas based on Google Earth Engine: A case study of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps

LI Jingxin1,2(),XU Erqi1(),ZHANG Hongqi1   

  1. 1. Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
    2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
  • Received:2020-09-26 Revised:2020-12-30 Online:2021-09-25 Published:2021-09-22
  • Contact: Erqi XU E-mail:18b@igsnrr.ac.cn;xueq@igsnrr.ac.cn

Abstract:

In recent years, a series of production and ecological environmental problems have occurred frequently because of the overloading of water resources utilized by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XJPCC) in China. Assessing the water carrying capacity of an area can precisely provide reference to socioeconomic development and ecological environment management of the XJPCC. Considering that irrigation water accounts for most of the total socioeconomic water consumption of the XJPCC, the precise level of cultivated land area significantly influences the accurate assessment of the water carrying status. However, the statistics of cultivated land area shows inaccuracies, which increase the uncertainty in the water carrying status assessment. For these reasons, the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform and net cultivated land coefficient were used to precisely obtain the proportion of cultivated land in this research. In this study, three scenarios were simulated on the basis of different irrigation quotas; these scenarios were the conventional irrigation, irrigation on a plastic film, and mixed standard irrigation scenarios. The total water requirement under the three scenarios could be regarded as the maximum, minimum, and middle values of the XJPCC theoretically. Besides the estimation of the irrigation water requirement for planting, a “living-production-ecology” water resources utilization accounting system was constructed for the accurate assessment of the water resource carrying status of the total XJPCC and of each division. The results show that the correction coefficient of cultivated land of the XJPCC is 1.27, which indicates that the inaccuracy in statistics is approximately 27%. In the mixed standard irrigation scenario, the scenario closest to the existing situation, the total water demand of the XJPCC was 106.45×10 8 m3 before the correction of the inaccuracy in the actual cultivated land use value; in this scenario, a 9.20% surplus in the total water diversion of the XJPCC was calculated. However, considering the revised cultivated land area, the total water demand was 125.64×108 m3, and it was found that the water resource utilization overloading rate was 7.16%, and only 2 of 13 divisions’ water resource utilization were within the carrying capacity. Irrigation water use required more than the existing water resources and therefore used ecological water, which became the critical factor in the overload of water resources utilization. Our study realizes the accurate and scientific assessment of the water resource carrying capacity of the XJPCC and provides a reference for utilizing and optimizing water resources and the sustainable development of agriculture.

Key words: water resources carrying status, accurate calculation, Google Earth Engine, Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, irrigation water, overload rate