Abstract
Water scarcity mitigation in regional agricultural systems contributes to water use efficiency improvement. Blue (WSIblue), green (WSIgreen) and grey (WSIgrey) water scarcity indices were proposed to describe various water stresses in detail and further determine the type of regional water scarcity. WSIblue and WSIgreen reveal resource-based water scarcities, and WSIgrey characterizes environment-based water shortages. Provincial water scarcity indices of China from 2000–2014 were calculated and analyzed in the current paper. The results indicated that the national WSI, WSIgrey, WSIblue and WSIgreen values are 0.84, 0.16, 0.39 and 0.89, respectively. China is facing a high water stress, manifested as a resource-based water shortage. Northwest and Northeast China experience a severe water quantity scarcity with high WSIblue and WSIgreen values, and the central and eastern regions exhibit a high WSIgrey value. Eastern China faces both serious resource-based and environmental water shortages. The constructed blue, green and grey water scarcity indices compensate for the inability of the existing index to determine the type of water shortage and indicate the reason for water scarcity. They also provide a targeted guiding significance for the formulation of effective measures to improve agricultural water resource management and alleviate regional water scarcity.
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Data Availability
The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- WF:
-
Water footprint
- WFblue :
-
Blue water footprint
- WFgreen :
-
Green water footprint
- WFgrey :
-
Grey water footprint
- CWF:
-
Consumptive water footprint
- DWF:
-
Degradable water footprint
- WR:
-
Water resources availability
- WRblue :
-
Blue water resource availability
- WRgreen :
-
Green water resource availability
- AWR:
-
Agricultural water resources availability
- TWR:
-
Total water resources availability
- EWR:
-
Environmental water requirement
- WSI:
-
Water scarcity index
- WSIblue :
-
Blue water scarcity index
- WSIgreen :
-
Green water scarcity index
- WSIgrey :
-
Grey water scarcity index
- WSIre :
-
Resource-based water scarcity index
- WSIen :
-
Environment-based water scarcity index
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Acknowledgement
This work is jointly funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (51979074), the Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province (17GLC013), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (B200202095).
Funding
This work is jointly funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (51979074), the Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province (17GLC013), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (B200202095).
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Rui Shu and Xinchun Cao contributed to the conception of the study; Rui Shu and Mengyang Wu contributed significantly to analysis and manuscript preparation; Rui Shui, Mengyang Wu and Xinchun Cao performed the data analyses and wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Shu, R., Cao, X. & Wu, M. Clarifying Regional Water Scarcity in Agriculture based on the Theory of Blue, Green and Grey Water Footprints. Water Resour Manage 35, 1101–1118 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-021-02779-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-021-02779-6