Intensified water resources conflict will be alleviated in future in China's Loess Plateau

Located in arid and semi-arid region, water is always the most essential recourse for China’s Loess Plateau (LP), a region that supports tens of millions of people. In the recent 30 years, with the ecological restoration, the land cover has greatly changed in this region, vegetation coverage increased evidently. When rain falls to the ground, it is first absorbed by vegetation and then turns into runoff. As a matter of fact, runoffs on Loess Plateau are decreasing distinctly, while the evaporation represents a rising trend, which further intensifies the conflict between people and ecosystem. Here, we estimated the potential water conflict after revegetation on LP, three key areas of water use conflict are analyzed. Then, we also predict the water sustainability of Loess Plateau under climate change in 2021-2100. (1) Vegetation growth has led to a decrease in water resource on the Loess Plateau; (2) the available water resources in the Loess Plateau has been really close to its limit in 2020, especially in the central and northern Shanxi Province, the northern Shaanxi Plateau and the surrounding areas of Liupan Mountain, water shortage has already emerged; (3) as the regional climate is becoming warmer and wetter, we estimate that the water resource conflict situation in the Loess Plateau will be eased in the future(2021-2100). These findings alert that although revegetation has provided many benefits, it has caused perceptible conflicts between water use of ecosystem and human society. Our results provided some perspectives on future water management.