Fig. 1: Water stress in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) and the underlying drivers from 1980 to 2020. | Communications Sustainability

Fig. 1: Water stress in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) and the underlying drivers from 1980 to 2020.

From: Yellow River Basin water stress has eased but may persist without enhanced efficiency and sustainable agriculture

Fig. 1

a Water scarcity index (WSI) and trend (P < 0.001) in the YRB. The red shading indicates extreme water stress, while the gray shading indicates severe water stress. b Profile and turning point (P < 0.01) of human water demand in the YRB. Human water demand includes water withdrawal for irrigation and other agricultural activities (including grazing, forestry, and fisheries), industry production, domestic water demand (household use and service activities), and ecological water demand. The accounting process is shown in Supplementary Fig. 3. Gray circles indicate turning points, and the solid line denotes the trend. c Water stress hotspots of YRB, calculated as the mean WSI for each period: P1 (1980–1996), P2 (1997–2004), and P3 (2005–2020). TNH = Tangnaihai (defined as the boundary between the source region and the upstream); LZ = Lanzhou; TDG = Toudaoguai (between the upper and midstream); HYK = Huayuankou (between the midstream and downstream); LJ = Lijin (estuary station). d Drivers of WSI. We decompose the trend and fluctuation components of the WSI using Seasonal and Trend decomposition with Loess (STL). We then analyze the Pearson correlation before and after the turning point in 1997. Colors represent the magnitude of the correlation coefficients. ** denotes a significance level of P < 0.01, while * indicates P < 0.05.

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