Water Resources Consumption in Plain Area of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region
宁夏平原区耗水量研究

Owing to transformation of surface and ground water frequently,it is difficult to distinguish water consumed by industry and ecology.Local precipitation is mixed with inflows and the relationships between water diversion and drainage are also not known clearly,which brings great difficulty to calculate accurately water consumption in Ningxia plain.The paper firstly analyzes the advantage and disadvantage of existing methods for water consumption calculation,and then adopts water cycle simulation approach to study water consumption law in Ningxia plain.Based on water cycle mechanism,the water-cycle model is developed to simulate the process of distribution,evaporation,infiltration and runoff in artificial and natural system of local water and inflows.The results shows the total evaporation is 47.2 billion cubic meters in Ningxia plain in 2000,in which the Yellow River water consumption is 33.5 billion cubic meters.If taking water losses of river way into account,the total Yellow River water consumption would be 36.9 billion cubic meters.Meanwhile,water consumption in Ningxia plain from 1991 to 2000 has the following characters: 1)The enlargement of irrigation area is the main factor of the increase of water consumption;2)The total evaporation is growing in Ningxia plain,but evaporation of natural ecosystem is gradually reducing;3) The Yellow River water consumption has been increasing from 27.6 billion cubic meters in 1991 to 33.5 billion cubic meters in 2000;4)Because of the integrated water allocation in the Yellow River Basin,water efficiency in irrigation has made a great progress in Ningxia plain.