Temporal and Spatial Changes in Crop Water Use Efficiency in Central Asia from 1960 to 2016

Shuang Liu, Geping Luo and Hao Wang
Additional contact information
Shuang Liu: State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China
Geping Luo: State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, China
Hao Wang: State Key Laboratory of Water School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-18

Abstract: Water resources among five Central Asian countries are distributed unevenly. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the conflict between water and land use has become increasingly serious. Due to limited data, the temporal and spatial characteristics and trends of crop water use efficiency in Central Asia over the past 60 years remain unclear. This paper combines state-level agricultural statistics data and cultivated land data (1975, 2005 and 2015) from remote sensing imagery and calculates crop water use efficiency based on the FAO crop coefficient method. The results are as follows: (1) the development of crop cultivation in Central Asia is divided into an expansion period (1960–1990), a reduction period (1990–2000), and a recovery period (2000–2016); (2) the grain yield in Central Asia increased from 0.9 to 1.9 t/ha during 1960–2016, with Uzbekistan having the highest, reaching 4.2 t/ha in 2016. Cotton yield increased during 1960–1990 and decreased from 1990 to 2016. (3) The grain water use efficiency in Central Asia increased from 0.22 kg/m 3 to 0.39 kg/m 3 during 1960–2016. The cotton water use efficiency increased from 0.23 kg/m 3 to 0.30 kg/m 3 during 1960–1990, has decreased since 1990, and is currently close to the 1960s level.

Keywords: Central Asia; planting structure; evapotranspiration; crop yield; water use efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/572/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/572/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:2:p:572-:d:307902

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().