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>Sustainable management of river oases along the Tarim River (SuMaRiO) in Northwest China under conditions of climate change
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Sustainable management of river oases along the Tarim River (SuMaRiO) in Northwest China under conditions of climate change
The Tarim River basin, located in Xinjiang, NW China, is the largestendorheic river basin in China and one of the largest in all of Central Asia.Due to the extremely arid climate, with an annual precipitation of less than100 mm, the water supply along the Aksu and Tarim rivers solely depends onriver water. This is linked to anthropogenic activities (e.g., agriculture) and natural and semi-natural ecosystems as both compete forwater. The ongoing increase in water consumption by agriculture and otherhuman activities in this region has been enhancing the competition for waterbetween human needs and nature. Against this background, 11 German and 6Chinese universities and research institutes have formed the consortium SuMaRiO(Sustainable Management of River Oases along the Tarim River; href="http://www.sumario.de"target="_blank">http://www.sumario.de), which aims to create a holistic picture of theavailability of water resources in the Tarim River basin and the impacts onanthropogenic activities and natural ecosystems caused by the waterdistribution within the Tarim River basin. On the basis of the results fromfield studies and modeling approaches as well as from suggestions by the relevantregional stakeholders, a decision support tool (DST) will be implementedthat will then assist stakeholders in balancing the competition forwater, acknowledging the major external effects of water allocation toagriculture and to natural ecosystems. This consortium was formed in 2011and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.As the data collection phase was finished this year, the paperpresented here brings together the results from the fields from the disciplines of climatemodeling, cryology, hydrology, agricultural sciences, ecology,geoinformatics, and social sciences in order to present a comprehensivepicture of the effects of different water availability schemes onanthropogenic activities and natural ecosystems along the TarimRiver. The second objective is to present the project structure of the wholeconsortium, the current status of work (i.e., major new results and findings),explain the foundation of the decision support tool as a key product of thisproject, and conclude with application recommendations for the region. Thedischarge of the Aksu River, which is the major tributary of the Tarim, hasbeen increasing over the past 6 decades. From 1989 to 2011, agricultural area more than doubled: cotton became the major crop andthere was a shift from small-scale to large-scale intensive farming.The ongoing increase in irrigated agricultural land leads to the increasedthreat of salinization and soil degradation caused by increasedevapotranspiration. Aside from agricultural land, themajor natural and semi-natural ecosystems are riparian (Tugai) forests,shrub vegetation, reed beds, and other grassland, as well as urban andperi-urban vegetation. Within the SuMaRiO cluster, focus has been set on theTugai forests, with Populus euphratica as the dominant tree species, because these forestsbelong to the most productive and species-rich natural ecosystems of theTarim River basin. At sites close to the groundwater, theannual stem diameter increments of Populus euphratica correlated with the river runoffs of theprevious year. However, the natural river dynamics cease along thedownstream course and thus hamper the recruitment of Populus euphratica. A study on thewillingness to pay for the conservation of the natural ecosystems wasconducted to estimate the concern of the people in the region and in China'scapital. These household surveys revealed that there is a considerablewillingness to pay for conservation of the natural ecosystems, with mitigation of dust and sandstorms considered the most importantecosystem service. Stakeholder dialogues contributed to creating ascientific basis for a sustainable management in the future.
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