Emergy Assessment of a Wheat-Maize Rotation System with Different Water Assignments in the North China Plain |
| |
Authors: | Shi Hu Xingguo Mo Zhonghui Lin Jianxiu Qiu |
| |
Institution: | (1) Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, Peoples’ Republic of China |
| |
Abstract: | Sustainable water use is seriously compromised in the North China Plain (NCP) due to the huge water requirements of agriculture,
the largest use of water resources. An integrated approach which combines the ecosystem model with emergy analysis is presented
to determine the optimum quantity of irrigation for sustainable development in irrigated cropping systems. Since the traditional
emergy method pays little attention to the dynamic interaction among components of the ecological system and dynamic emergy
accounting is in its infancy, it is hard to evaluate the cropping system in hypothetical situations or in response to specific
changes. In order to solve this problem, an ecosystem model (Vegetation Interface Processes (VIP) model) is introduced for
emergy analysis to describe the production processes. Some raw data, collected by investigating or observing in conventional
emergy analysis, may be calculated by the VIP model in the new approach. To demonstrate the advantage of this new approach,
we use it to assess the wheat-maize rotation cropping system at different irrigation levels and derive the optimum quantity
of irrigation according to the index of ecosystem sustainable development in NCP. The results show, the optimum quantity of
irrigation in this region should be 240–330 mm per year in the wheat system and no irrigation in the maize system, because
with this quantity of irrigation the rotation crop system reveals: best efficiency in energy transformation (transformity = 6.05E + 4 sej/J);
highest sustainability (renewability = 25%); lowest environmental impact (environmental loading ratio = 3.5) and the greatest
sustainability index (Emergy Sustainability Index = 0.47) compared with the system in other irrigation amounts. This study
demonstrates that application of the new approach is broader than the conventional emergy analysis and the new approach is
helpful in optimizing resources allocation, resource-savings and maintaining agricultural sustainability. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|