IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agiwat/v315y2025ics0378377425002604.html

Connection between water consumption of apple production and subsurface water depletion on the Loess Plateau of China

Author

Listed:
  • Shi, Peijun
  • Yang, Jianjun
  • Yang, Yi
  • Li, Zhi

Abstract

Economic tree species, particularly those in the agroforestry ecosystems, significantly impact subsurface hydrological processes due to their high transpiration and water demand. Understanding the impacts of agroforestry systems on subsurface water is crucial for sustainable water management, but quantitative regional-scale assessment remains challenging. This study investigated the relationship between water consumption in apple production and subsurface water in the Changwu County on the Loess Plateau of China. Using the dataset of apple orchard areas and yields from 1995 to 2020, we quantified the consumed water and depleted subsurface water by apple production, and subsequently analyzed their relationships with water table. Results indicated a clear linkage between water table decline and water consumption for apple production. Since 2005, precipitation has been unable to meet water demand of apple production, leading to progressive depletion of subsurface water. By 2020, the cumulative water depletion in the study area reached 3.6 × 107 m3, corresponding to a 63 mm decline in the water table depth equivalent to 11 % of mean annual precipitation. Both water consumption for apple production and subsurface water depletion showed linear growth trends in parallel with orchard expansion. The spatial extent of apple orchards was identified as the primary driver of regional subsurface water depletion. Intensive apple production has disrupted groundwater connectivity in this area, thereby increasing the risk to subsurface water. These findings provide valuable insights for balancing sustainable water management and agricultural production.

Suggested Citation

  • Shi, Peijun & Yang, Jianjun & Yang, Yi & Li, Zhi, 2025. "Connection between water consumption of apple production and subsurface water depletion on the Loess Plateau of China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 315(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:315:y:2025:i:c:s0378377425002604
    DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2025.109546
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377425002604
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.agwat.2025.109546?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abrishamchi, Ahmad & Khakbazan Fard, Faezeh & Taghavi, Ali, 2020. "Planning for groundwater sustainable use: A case study in Nishapur Plain, Iran," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).
    2. Yang, Yi & Li, Bingbing & Shi, Peijun & Li, Zhi, 2023. "Assessing spatiotemporally varied ecohydrological effects of apple orchards based on regional-scale estimation of tree distribution and ages," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).
    3. Li, Han & Si, Bing Cheng & Zhang, Zhiqiang & Miao, Changhong, 2022. "Deep soil water storage and drainage following conversion of deep rooted to shallow rooted vegetation," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 261(C).
    4. M. O. Cuthbert & T. Gleeson & N. Moosdorf & K. M. Befus & A. Schneider & J. Hartmann & B. Lehner, 2019. "Global patterns and dynamics of climate–groundwater interactions," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 9(2), pages 137-141, February.
    5. Dzikiti, S. & Volschenk, T. & Midgley, S.J.E & Lötze, E. & Taylor, N.J & Gush, M.B. & Ntshidi, Z. & Zirebwa, S.F & Doko, Q. & Schmeisser, M. & Jarmain, C. & Steyn, W.J & Pienaar, H.H., 2018. "Estimating the water requirements of high yielding and young apple orchards in the winter rainfall areas of South Africa using a dual source evapotranspiration model," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 152-162.
    6. Chi Chen & Taejin Park & Xuhui Wang & Shilong Piao & Baodong Xu & Rajiv K. Chaturvedi & Richard Fuchs & Victor Brovkin & Philippe Ciais & Rasmus Fensholt & Hans Tømmervik & Govindasamy Bala & Zaichun , 2019. "China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 2(2), pages 122-129, February.
    7. Xiaoming Feng & Bojie Fu & Shilong Piao & Shuai Wang & Philippe Ciais & Zhenzhong Zeng & Yihe Lü & Yuan Zeng & Yue Li & Xiaohui Jiang & Bingfang Wu, 2016. "Revegetation in China’s Loess Plateau is approaching sustainable water resource limits," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 6(11), pages 1019-1022, November.
    8. Li, Huijie & Ma, Xiaojun & Lu, Yanwei & Ren, Ruiqi & Cui, Buli & Si, Bingcheng, 2021. "Growing deep roots has opposing impacts on the transpiration of apple trees planted in subhumid loess region," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    9. Xiang, Keyu & Li, Yi & Horton, Robert & Feng, Hao, 2020. "Similarity and difference of potential evapotranspiration and reference crop evapotranspiration – a review," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tao, Ze & Wang, Xia & Siddique, Kadambot H.M., 2023. "Evaluating the bias effects of rooting depth and cryogenic vacuum extraction to quantify root water uptake patterns in deep-rooted apple trees," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 289(C).
    2. Yang, Yi & Li, Bingbing & Shi, Peijun & Li, Zhi, 2023. "Assessing spatiotemporally varied ecohydrological effects of apple orchards based on regional-scale estimation of tree distribution and ages," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).
    3. Liang, Wei & Chen, Ning & Gou, Fen & Wang, Yonghui & Yao, Yingying & Lü, Yihe & Wang, Longhai & Yan, Jianwu & Li, Shuai, 2025. "Quantifying anthropogenic drivers of water storage decline to support sustainable water management in a coal-mining semi-arid region," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 322(C).
    4. Wu, Bingfang & Fu, Zhijun & Fu, Bojie & Yan, Changzhen & Zeng, Hongwei & Zhao, Wenwu, 2024. "Dynamics of land cover changes and driving forces in China’s drylands since the 1970 s," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    5. Xue, Shaobo & Ma, Bo & Wang, Chenguang & Li, Zhanbin, 2023. "Identifying key landscape pattern indices influencing the NPP: A case study of the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 484(C).
    6. Badir S. Alsaeed & Dexter V. L. Hunt & Soroosh Sharifi, 2022. "Sustainable Water Resources Management Assessment Frameworks (SWRM-AF) for Arid and Semi-Arid Regions: A Systematic Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-31, November.
    7. Cunha, Angélica Carvalho & Filho, Luís Roberto Almeida Gabriel & Tanaka, Adriana Aki & Goes, Bruno Cesar & Putti, Fernando Ferrari, 2021. "Influence Of The Estimated Global Solar Radiation On The Reference Evapotranspiration Obtained Through The Penman-Monteith Fao 56 Method," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 243(C).
    8. Nikolai Dronin, 2023. "Reasons to rename the UNCCD: Review of transformation of the political concept through the influence of science," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 2058-2078, March.
    9. Zhang, Qingsong & Sun, Jiahao & Dai, Changlei & Zhang, Guangxin & Wu, Yanfeng, 2024. "Sustainable development of groundwater resources under the large-scale conversion of dry land into rice fields," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 298(C).
    10. Pinki Mondal & Sonali Shukla McDermid, 2021. "Editorial for Special Issue: “Global Vegetation and Land Surface Dynamics in a Changing Climate”," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-4, January.
    11. Peter Addo Amarkai & Sinan Süheri, 2024. "Comparative Evaluation of Crop Evapotranspiration Estimation Methods in a Semi-Arid Region," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(24), pages 1-20, December.
    12. Lijuan Du & Li Xu & Yanping Li & Changshun Liu & Zhenhua Li & Jefferson S. Wong & Bo Lei, 2019. "China’s Agricultural Irrigation and Water Conservancy Projects: A Policy Synthesis and Discussion of Emerging Issues," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-20, December.
    13. Ma, Shuai & Wang, Liang-Jie & Chu, Lei & Jiang, Jiang, 2023. "Determination of ecological restoration patterns based on water security and food security in arid regions," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 278(C).
    14. Shan Jiang & Jian Zhou & Guojie Wang & Qigen Lin & Ziyan Chen & Yanjun Wang & Buda Su, 2022. "Cropland Exposed to Drought Is Overestimated without Considering the CO 2 Effect in the Arid Climatic Region of China," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-21, June.
    15. Jian, Yuqing & Liu, Zhengjia & Gong, Jianzhou, 2022. "Response of landscape dynamics to socio-economic development and biophysical setting across the farming-pastoral ecotone of northern China and its implications for regional sustainable land management," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    16. Songbai Hong & Jinzhi Ding & Fei Kan & Hao Xu & Shaoyuan Chen & Yitong Yao & Shilong Piao, 2023. "Asymmetry of carbon sequestrations by plant and soil after forestation regulated by soil nitrogen," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-10, December.
    17. Akmal, Freshteh Avatefi & Mohammadi, Yaser, 2025. "The nexus of agricultural land use change and food security: A comprehensive systematic review," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    18. Liu, Shilei & Xia, Jun, 2021. "Forest harvesting restriction and forest restoration in China," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    19. Dzikiti, S. & Lotter, D. & Mpandeli, S. & Nhamo, L., 2022. "Assessing the energy and water balance dynamics of rain-fed rooibos tea crops (Aspalathus linearis) under changing Mediterranean climatic conditions," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 274(C).
    20. Liu, Yansui & Zhou, Yang, 2021. "Reflections on China's food security and land use policy under rapid urbanization," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:315:y:2025:i:c:s0378377425002604. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.