Sustainable Water and Agricultural Land Use in the Guanting Basin under Limited Water Resources

In terms of per capita water availability, the Guanting Basin is one of the world's most water scarce regions. The catchment of the Guanting reservoir ("Guanting basin") covers an area of 43.605 km². With regard to administrative areas the western part belongs to the Shanxi Province while the eastern section is part of Hebei Province. Smaller portions extend into Beijing and Inner Mongolia autonomous region. The book presents research results of a Chinese-German scenario study that explored sustainable water and land use management strategies in the Guanting Basin. The basin, located northwest of Beijing, is facing dramatic water challenges. Originally, the research approach has been developed in the German landscape for the Elbe River. Within the Guanting project this approach - and model chain - was transferred to completely different conditions of an East Asian landscape and river basin. Together with Chinese project partners the German researchers adapted their climate, discharge, water balance and nutrient emission models to the regional conditions of the Guanting basin. Additional water quality monitoring, reservoir classification and socio-economic methods as well as different future development scenarios for the region were produced. In the end, a regional integrated model setup has been composed to assess different adaptation options and their benefits to water and land use management under different climate and socio-economic scenarios.