A Study of Ecological Water Requirement and Efficiency of Water Allocation Based on Oasis Irrigation Area Scale: A Case of Middle Reaches of Heihe River

MENG Jijun, WANG Jiangwei, WANG Ya†, ZHOU Zhen, JIANG Song

Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes (MOE), School of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871; † Corresponding author, E-mail: wangyayas@sina.com

Abstract Based on many data sources, such as basic geographic information, land use and cover information and statistic data of irrigation areas, the authors picked agricultural irrigation areas in the middle reaches of Heihe river as a study area and analyzed the spatial-temporal distributions of ecological water requirement with Penmanmonteith equation and NDVI data. Considering the real water diversion and consumption per unit grain yield, the efficiency of water allocation was also analyzed. The results show that the annual potential evapotranspiration is between 800 and 1200 mm and the peak occurs between June and August. Average annual potential evapotranspiration is between 614 and 999 mm while maximum of demand appears from April to August. Ecological water requirement reduces from southeast to northwest gradually which is relatively larger along the Heihe river. Ground water plays major role in water diversion while underground water is minor. The yield of water diversion is the largest in 2008 and irrigation areas which have more water diversions flock around the Heihe river. Overall, water resource allocation overthere is fair good. Water supply-demand rate around Heihe river is generally greater than 1 while it is opposite in Shandan and Minle. Nearly 80% of the irrigation areas can be considered as efficient or relative efficient regions. There are four irrigation districts are inefficient and only one is short of water diversion. Therefore, adjustment of water diversion in some certain regions with promotion of water saving technology can