Analysis on spatial and temporal differences of agricultural economic water productivity and its influencing factors in China
LIU Haijun
ZHOU Xueqing
WANG Keke
Abstract：Water productivity is one of the key indicators for the management and performance evaluation of agricultural water resources.However,due to the large yield differences among crops,their water productivity cannot be directly compared.To address this issue,the concepts of agricultural economic water productivity(WPe)and agricultural economic irrigation water productivity(IWPe)were proposed,in which agricultural output value was used to replace crop yield,eliminating the influence of crop differences and enabling comparative evaluation of agricultural water use efficiency across different times and regions.Using provinces as the basic unit,WPe and IWPe were calculated to analyze their spatial and temporal distribution characteristics IWPe in China and among provinces from 2000 to 2022.The influencing factors were further identified through a random forest feature importance evaluation.The results show that the values of WPe and IWPe in all provinces continuously increased from 2000 to 2022,with national averages rising from 1.1 yuan/m3 and 3.8 yuan/m3 to 5.8 yuan/m3 and 22.3 yuan/m3,respectively.Spatial autocorrelation analysis indicated that provinces with similar WPe exhibited significant spatial clustering,generally showing a high level in North China and a low level in Southwest China.About 15 provinces displayed high-high(HH)or low-low(LL)local autocorrelation attributes,and both the overall and local spatial differentiation characteristics showed no significant temporal change during the 23 years.The spatial clustering of IWPe was not obvious.Gross regional product,added value of agriculture,forestry,animal husbandry and fishery,total power of agricultural machinery,amount of applied chemical fertilizers(converted to pure nutrients),and effective irrigated area were identified as the main influencing factors.Based on these factors,pathways to improve agricultural economic water use efficiency were proposed,providing references for national and local agricultural water resources management.
Keywords：agricultural economic water productivityagricultural economic irrigation water productivityspatial-temporal distributioninfluencing factorsrandom forest feature importance evaluationspatial differentiation characteristicsagricultural water resources
Publication Date：2025-11-30
Online Publishing Date：2025-12-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：11( 26-36 )