Assessment framework for water-suitable planting patterns of economic tree species in arid areas

Chao Xu, Wei Kong, Dongmei Zhao, Ting Bai, Fei Gao, Xiaobo Luan and Shikun Sun

Agricultural Water Management, 2025, vol. 314, issue C

Abstract: Appropriate forest restoration is of great significance in arid regions. However, it is necessary to balance soil moisture utilization to maintain the health of the ecosystem. The northern Shaanxi region of the Loess Plateau has undergone large-scale afforestation, primarily focused on fruit tree planting. Although it is a favorable production area for apples, unreasonable planting patterns have exacerbated soil moisture consumption, leading to a contradiction between orchard expansion and water scarcity. Therefore, this study selects apple orchards in this region as the research subject. By integrating the calibrated WinEPIC model and MaxEnt model, the study evaluates water-suitable planting patterns for orchards, including suitable planting years, planting density, theoretical coverage, and the evolution of suitable growth areas under future climate scenarios. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Orchard yield and water productivity show a parabolic increasing trend with planting density; (2) The suitable planting density for representative orchards varies between 611 and 1099 trees/hm², and the theoretical coverage gradually decreases from south to north; (3) Under future climate scenarios, the distribution range of suitable growth areas becomes more concentrated, with the centroid of suitable areas shifting northward. This study is of great significance for guiding the sustainable development of the apple industry in northern Shaanxi. At the same time, it also provides valuable references and examples for forest restoration and water-suitable planting of tree species in other similar regions.

Keywords: Water-suitable planting patterns; Soil water carrying capacity for vegetation; Suitable growth area; Forest restoration; Loess Plateau (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377425002276
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:agiwat:v:314:y:2025:i:c:s0378377425002276

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2025.109513

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().