Driving factors and countermeasures for changing of irrigation area in Guanzhong Irrigation District of Shan'xi Province

摘要

Agriculture is the premise for social stability and economic development in China, and irrigation plays a very important role for food production and food security. With the rapid growth of population and economic development, irrigation area in China has a decreasing tendency in the past years, which has drawn more attention of the govemment. In this paper, we analyzed the characteristics of dynamic change of irrigation area in Guanzhong Irrigation District of Shan'xi Province through the data from 1980 to 2000, and then summarized driving factors and countermeasures of changes with the grey correlation analysis method. The result shows that dozens of reasons including weather conditions, crop pattem, water demand contribute to be the cause of irrigation area changes, and in different irrigation districts, the driving factors are different between each other. Then some efficient countermeasures were prompted through a wide range of structural measures and non-structural measures including irrigation management reform to develop water-saving agriculture, cropping patterns changes to guarantee food security, finally the sustainable development of the irrigation district will be achieved in the future.