Evaluating Ecological Benefit of Land Consolidation at County Scale in North China Plain Using Water Footprint Concept

Abstract

【Objective】 Land consolidation is to improve the efficiency and productivity of segmented lands. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate its ecological gains at country scale in northern China Plain using the water footprint concept. 【Method】 The evaluation is based on the GROPWAT model. It calculates the blue, green and gray water footprint before and after land consolidation. The ecological performance of the land consolidation is evaluated using four specific remediation projects as the criteria layers, and 11 indicators. The method is applied to the 16 villages and towns in Jing County, Hebei province. 【Result】 Implementing the land consolidation increases the blue, green and gray water footprints in all villages and towns, especially the blue and gray water footprints which increase more significantly. The overall ecological performance of the 16 villages and towns in the county is good, with eight of them achieving good grade or above, and 13 reaching medium grade or above. The main obstacles hindering the improvement of ecological performance in the county are how to increas new irrigated land rate, hardening rate of new roads, drainage and irrigation intensity, turning rain-fed land to irrigated land, and biological diversity and abundance. The main obstacles are hydraulic land levelling, followed by road and ecological factors. 【Conclusion】 Overall, implementing the land consolidation can improve ecological benefits to Jing County, but it has a negative impact on water resources. The ecological performance evaluation model proposed in this paper is potential for evaluating land consolidation in other regions in northern China.

Keywords

• land consolidation
• water footprint
• ecological performance
• comprehensive empowerment method