Sino-France Institute of Earth Systems Science, Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China;
Sino-France Institute of Earth Systems Science, Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Apr 7;117(14):7702-7711. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1909902117. Epub 2020 Mar 24.
Increased human water use combined with climate change have aggravated water scarcity from the regional to global scales. However, the lack of spatially detailed datasets limits our understanding of the historical water use trend and its key drivers. Here, we present a survey-based reconstruction of China's sectoral water use in 341 prefectures during 1965 to 2013. The data indicate that water use has doubled during the entire study period, yet with a widespread slowdown of the growth rates from 10.66 km⋅y before 1975 to 6.23 km⋅y in 1975 to 1992, and further down to 3.59 km⋅y afterward. These decelerations were attributed to reduced water use intensities of irrigation and industry, which partly offset the increase driven by pronounced socioeconomic development (i.e., economic growth, population growth, and structural transitions) by 55% in 1975 to 1992 and 83% after 1992. Adoptions for highly efficient irrigation and industrial water recycling technologies explained most of the observed reduction of water use intensities across China. These findings challenge conventional views about an acceleration in water use in China and highlight the opposing roles of different drivers for water use projections.
人类用水量的增加与气候变化相结合，使水资源短缺从区域范围扩大到全球范围。然而，缺乏空间详细数据集限制了我们对历史用水趋势及其关键驱动因素的理解。在这里，我们根据调查重建了中国 1965 年至 2013 年 341 个地级市的部门用水量。数据表明，在整个研究期间，用水量增加了一倍，但增长率从 1975 年之前的 10.66 千米/年普遍放缓至 1975 年至 1992 年的 6.23 千米/年，之后进一步降至 3.59 千米/年。这些减速归因于灌溉和工业用水强度的降低，部分抵消了 1975 年至 1992 年期间由显著的社会经济发展（即经济增长、人口增长和结构转型）驱动的增长，1992 年后则抵消了 83%。在中国，高效灌溉和工业水回收技术的采用解释了用水量强度普遍降低的大部分原因。这些发现挑战了关于中国用水量加速的传统观点，并强调了不同驱动因素对用水预测的相反作用。
