Environ Earth Sci (2016) 75:1167
DOI 10.1007/s12665-016-5951-4
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Groundwater storage and depletion trends in the Loess areas
of China
Aidi Huo1,2,3 • Jianbing Peng4 • Xunhong Chen5 • Lin Deng1,2 • Guoliang Wang6
Yuxiang Cheng4
Received: 16 October 2015 / Accepted: 30 July 2016 / Published online: 11 August 2016
Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
Abstract Groundwater is the essential source of drinking
and irrigation water supplies in most parts of the world.
The Loess area is one among the largest manufacturers of
agricultural merchandise in China and is to a great extent
dependent on groundwater for public water supply and
irrigation. The effect of expanded open supplies and irri-
gation on groundwater levels has not been very much
investigated, both spatially and temporally. Thus, this study
has used remote sensing data from NASA’s Gravity
Recovery and the Global Land Data Assimilation Systems
to assess the aggregate change in groundwater storage
across the Loess area over a period of 13 years, from 2002
to 2014. The results demonstrate that the total groundwater
depletion occurred at the rate of 529.73 km3 yr-1, and the
mean groundwater consumption rate was -3.89 cm yr-1
between the winter and monsoon seasons during the period
of 2002–2014. The most extreme consumption rate
& Jianbing Peng
dicexy_1@chd.edu.cn
1
Key Laboratory of Subsurface Hydrology and Ecological
Effect in Arid Region of the Ministry of Education,
Chang’an University, Xi’an 710054, China
2
School of Environmental Science and Engineering,
Chang’an University, Xi’an 710054, China
3
State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water
Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and
Hydropower Research, Beijing 100038, China
4
School of Geology Engineering and Geomatics,
Chang’an University, Xi’an 710054, Shaanxi Province, China
5
School of Natural Resources, University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68583-0996, USA
6
Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Northwest A&F
University, Yangling 712100, Shaanxi Province, China
•
occurred during 2004 (-7.60 cm yr-1), while the mini-
mum occurred during 2003 (1.13 cm yr-1). Groundwater
consumption at such high rates will prompt unsustainable
groundwater levels, bringing about financial anxiety, vul-
nerability to environmental change and excruciating bur-
dens to sustenance and water security. Careful assessment
of spatiotemporal groundwater storage in the Loess area
will help China’s water resource managers and policy-
makers administrate groundwater resources in the future to
improve water and food security.
Keywords Groundwater depletion  GRACE  GLDAS 
Remote sensing  Loess areas
Introduction
Monitoring of regional to continental scale aquifer water
storage variability using conventional methods, by well
network at points to local scales, is problematic (Rodell
et al. 2007). Still, along these lines, to estimate regional
groundwater storage variations can generate errors because
of spatial and temporal data gaps, data formatting and
irregularity, human and mechanical errors and sparsely
accessible metadata for converting hydraulic head to vol-
umetric water storage. Furthermore, it is costly and labor
intensive to establish and keep up with running a well
network.
Despite the fact that in situ monitoring well networks
provide high resolution estimates of the aquifer water
storage variability, remotely sensed data make up the only
available source of information for assessing water
resources in sparsely monitored regions (Sun 2013). Con-
sequently, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
(GRACE) satellite mission has pulled in much
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consideration since its launch. GRACE observes temporal
variations of Earth’s gravitational potential, which, after
removing atmospheric and oceanic effects and is often
times caused by changes in terrestrial water storage (Tap-
ley et al. 2004). Managing the limited groundwater
resources in a way that will make certain of equitable,
sustainable, and economically prudent decisions is desir-
able. Observing soil moisture, snow depth, runoff and other
water cycle components over extensive scales can be
similarly or all the more difficult.
GRACE is the first satellite remote sensing mission
which is straightforwardly pertinent to the appraisal of
groundwater storage under all types of terrestrial condi-
tions (Tapley et al. 2004; Zhong et al. 2009; Huang et al.
2015). GRACE is unique in that it relies on observations of
satellite orbit perturbations which are brought about by
gravitational anomalies close to the land surface. Thus, the
exact estimation is the technique that it resolves changes in
the gravity field due to redistribution of mass near the
Earth’s surface, including oceanic and atmospheric circu-
lations, and as well terrestrial water cycling. By isolating
the contributions to temporal mass variability implement-
ing numerical models and auxiliary observations, it is
conceivable to gauge the changes in groundwater storage
over adequately huge regions (Rodell and Famiglietti 2002;
Feng et al. 2013).
With the surface water storage variations assessed, for
example, from the Global Land Data Assimilation System
(GLDAS) and then subtracted from the terrestrial water
storage (TWS), GRACE brings to forefront a new oppor-
tunity to monitor the groundwater storage variations
(Rodell et al. 2004). Over the past decade, GRACE has
been utilized to gauge regional water storage variations,
e.g., in the USA (Famiglietti and Rodell 2013), the Yangtze
River basin (Hu et al. 2006; Ferreira et al. 2013), the
Amazon River basin (Chen et al. 2009; Feng et al. 2012;
Frappart et al. 2013), the Lake Victoria (Awange et al.
2008) and the Congo River basin (Crowley et al. 2006),
observing the mass balance of Antarctica (Wen et al. 2011;
Velicogna 2009) and Greenland (Luthcke et al. 2006; Chen
et al. 2011), as well as assessing the contributions of gla-
ciers and ice caps to sea-level rise (Jacob et al. 2012; Chen
et al. 2013).
The Loess area of China is one of the regions with the
most extremely harmed ecological environment. According
to history, this area is one of the cradles of the Chinese
nation and its culture. It has beautiful, large forest, as well
as a forest-steppe area. Be that as it may, in the past
2000 years, environmental problems such as water short-
ages, vegetation reduction and frequent natural disasters
were reported to be severe (Moiwo et al. 2009; Tang et al.
2013). Thus, recovery and management of the ecological
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Environ Earth Sci (2016) 75:1167
environment in this area is critical. The groundwater stor-
age change trend is one of the key factors influencing
ecological restoration in the Loess area of China. The
groundwater storage trend was estimated using GRACE for
China’s Loess area during the period (2002–2014) for
agricultural intensification. The sustainability of present
agricultural activities and vegetation changes were better
understood by contrasting this trend with natural ground-
water recharge rates. The conclusions from this research
will empower land-use planners and decision makers to
comprehend how intensifying agricultural practices influ-
ence groundwater on the long term.
Data and methods
Datasets acquisition
This research evaluated 13-year groundwater tendency
from 2002 to 2014. The tendency was derived from the
examination of remote sensing images. They recorded
groundwater depletion tendency with the aid of GRACE
mission and GLDAS missions across the Loess area in
China. The primary scientific target of GRACE mission
was to provide a highly accurate Earth gravity field model
and its time-variable characteristics with a spatial resolu-
tion of 300 km and a temporal resolution of 10 days.
Andersen and Hinderer (2005) showed that GRACE is
capable of capturing the changes in continental ground-
water on inter-annual scales corresponding to 9 mm water
thickness on spatial scales of 1300 km and longer. The
GRACE field was filtered using the 300-km-wide Gaussian
filter method and was finally converted to mass in units of
equivalent water thickness (EWT). The groundwater stor-
age change was also evaluated in different seasons (May,
August and December) for the study period. In addition, we
calculated the shortage of groundwater resources in the
Loess area. The calculation was made by comparing the
groundwater depletion to natural groundwater recharge via
precipitation.
Study site description
Loess covers about 10 % of the Earth’s land surface and is
for the most part dispersed in temperate climates and semi-
arid climates on the edge of deserts, where the population
is dense, and also has high industry/agriculture develop-
ment. Loess is an eolian sediment; it is homogeneous,
permeable, friable, somewhat intelligible, normally non-
stratified and frequently calcareous. The silt particle con-
tent of Loess accounts for a significant proportion
(50–80 %); Loess is made up of quartz, feldspar, mica and
Environ Earth Sci (2016) 75:1167
Fig. 1 Map of China with the Loess area. The map shows 9 provinces and cities (The red dotted line are the boundaries based on the Yellow
River; those boundaries divide China’s Loess area into three sub-areas from west to east.)
other minerals; it is also enriched in carbonate (typically up
to 10–15 % or higher) (Hu et al. 2015). Chinese Loess is
primarily dispersed in the middle reaches of the Yellow
River (Fig. 1), representing about 72 % of Loess covered
area (0.44 million km2) in China (Li et al. 2009). Chinese
Loess distribution areas are larger than any other country of
the world. Loess Plateau in northwest China is the largest
Loess Plateau of the world; Loess plains of North China are
also the largest in the world. China’s Loess total area
accounts for 6 % of the land area. From a regional per-
spective, China’s Loess area is mainly distributed in
Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Ningxia, Qinghai and
Hebei provinces (Fig. 1). In detail, Loess mainly dis-
tributed in central and eastern Gansu, central and northern
Shaanxi, the south and west Inner Mongolia, most of
Shanxi, northern, west and northwest of Henan, western
Shandong, Liaoning mountain area and the east of Qinghai.
The Loess of the north China Plain is more deeply buried in
the thick alluvial layer. Loess layer thickness is generally
up to 100 m.
The observed groundwater level data were used to verify
the groundwater storage changes estimated by GRACE in
the Loess areas of China. Herein, in the Loess areas of
China from 2002 to 2010, the observed groundwater data
were collected by Ningxia Geological Environment
Page 3 of 11 1167
Monitoring Station; these groundwater observation wells
are mainly located in the Yinchuan Plain area in Ningxia
Province (see Fig. 1). The Yinchuan Plain is one of Chi-
nese oldest irrigated areas. The Yinchuan Plain lies in the
east edge of monsoon climate of China, with an average
annual precipitation of 192, l00 mm lower than in a year of
low water. It also has an annual average temperature
between 8 and 9 °C and an average annual evaporation of
1162 mm. The precipitation is different in space and time,
the precipitation from July to September accounting for
about 70 % of the precipitation of the whole year.
As a Cenozoic fault basin, the Yinchuan Plain contains
7000 m of Cenozoic sediments overlain by about 2000 m
of weakly consolidated Quaternary material (Wu et al.
2008). Geological mapping uncovers the landform zoning
from the northwest to the Yellow River in the southeast
(Fig. 1). They start from an inclined pluvial plain, then
changed to a pluvial–alluvial plain and subsequently to an
alluvial–lacustrine plain, near the river. To the east, the
Quaternary sediments became thick and bolstered a multi-
layer aquifer system, up to 250 m thick, with a shallow
phreatic aquifer underlain by two confined aquifers. The
aquifers are isolated by normally continual aquitards with
thickness between 3 and 10 m. The Yinchuan Plain is a
conventional agrarian area. There are a large number of
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pumping wells, many of which are phreatic wells (Qian
et al. 2012).
As the phreatic table depth is relatively shallow (typi-
cally less than 3 m subsurface), groundwater flow direc-
tions are largely governed by surface topography.
Groundwater generally flows north and east, and exten-
sively correspondent with the Yellow River course.
Hydraulic gradients are relatively steep in the south and
west, indicating large groundwater fluxes (Qian et al.
2012).
The monthly groundwater levels from the Yinchuan
Plain, a district in the Loess area, were compared to GRACE/
GLDAS observed groundwater storage trends across north-
west China for 2002–2014. Geographical Information Sys-
tems (GIS) were then used to characterize trends between
observed groundwater level and remotely sensed ground-
water storage. To test the groundwater variations trend
obtained from GRACE time-variable gravity field model, the
groundwater level changes in monitoring wells from the
same spatial location were compared to the GRACE/
GLDAS observed groundwater storage height. The varia-
tions in groundwater storage height are calculated by the
Environmental Monitoring Institute of State Land and
Resources Ministry. This network is primarily aimed at
monitoring the impact of climate on groundwater levels. A
large portion of the wells are situated in unconfined or near-
surface confined aquifers. Pumping or other anthropogenic
stresses have minimal effects on them to ensure that the
groundwater level variations in these monitoring wells are
predominantly influenced by climate but negligibly by
anthropogenic activities or tide. The good quality datasets
from the network make sure the calculation precision in the
water storage variation.
GRACE-based terrestrial water storage (TWS)
estimations
GRACE data have been widely used for groundwater studies
all around the world (Rodell et al. 2009, 2004; Rodell and
Famiglietti 2002; Rodell et al. 2007). The GRACE mission
was launched on March 17, 2002. Two satellites work in
unison in the GRACE satellite mission. The mass anomalies
attributed to groundwater volume variations make the
gravitational field change that in turn results in perturbations
in the GRACE satellite orbits. One satellite captures the
perturbations as variations in TWS, while the other experi-
ences changes in the orbit (Rodell et al. 2007). Along these
lines, the planet’s gravitational field can be used to deduce its
composition and structure (Tapley et al. 2004). Based on the
working principle that the satellite orbits each location once a
month, the scientists can estimate monthly resolution chan-
ges in TWS over the globe.
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Environ Earth Sci (2016) 75:1167
Total soil moisture (SM) estimations based
on GLDAS
The Global Land Data Assimilation Systems (GLDAS) was
developed mutually by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
(GFC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-
istration (NOAA) to estimate and record land surface states
and fluxes (Rodell et al. 2004, 2009). The prepared GLDAS
information was available online, and the services were
provided by the Information Services Center and Goddard
Earth Sciences Data (http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov).
In the GLDAS, estimates on the total SM can be
obtained by utilizing land surface models (LSMs). It is the
global remote sensing data that drive the models. Of the
land surface models, the National Centers for Environ-
mental Prediction/Oregon State University/Air Force/Hy-
drologic Research Lab Model (NOAH), MOSAIC,
Common Land Model (CLM) and variable infiltration
capacity (VIC) are very famous. In the present research, a
land hydrology LSM in the GLDAS, Noah 2.7.1, is used as
an equivalent thickness to estimate soil moisture from the
surface up to a depth of 200 cm. The net groundwater
storage can then be calculated using the Noah estimates of
total SM together with TWS estimates based on GRACE.
Details on the Noah, LSMs and GLDAS may be derived
from Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Ser-
vices Center (GES DISC).
Precipitation and TWS
The Information Services Center and Goddard Earth Sci-
ences Data provide the monthly rainfall data on district scale
during the period between 2002 and 2014. Annual hyeto-
graphs were constructed using the monthly rainfall data. The
archives of the monthly GRACE data grids of land mass can
be found in the University of Texas Center for Space
Research (CSR) (Landerer and Swenson 2012), Jet Propul-
sion Laboratory (JPL), and the GeoForschungsZentrum
Potsdam (GFZ) and may be obtained online (Swenson and
Wahr 2006) (http://gracetellus.jpl.nasa.gov/data/). Sean
Swenson developed the processing algorithms on GRACE
land data (http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov). The present GRACE
datasets were built on the basis of the level V spherical
harmonics (RL05) from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL-
NASA), Center for Space Research (CSR-Texas) and Geo
Forschung Zentrum (GFZ-Potsdam, Germany). From the
GRACE data download page, the information on the
GRACE data solutions (Chen et al. 2011), glacial-isostatic
adjustments (Geruo et al. 2013) and degree one coefficients
(Swenson et al. 2008) obtained from the data can be deduced.
Mass variability resulting from snow water equivalent and
plant biomass was considered negligible in the study, since
Environ Earth Sci (2016) 75:1167
the former was insignificant due to the temperate climate in
the Loess area.
Total SM and groundwater storage (GW)
Soil moisture, groundwater and snow were assumed
herein to be the non-negligible contributors to TWS
mass variability in the Loess area. Thus, on the basis of
GRACE-estimated terrestrial water storage changes
(DTWS) and numerically modeled soil moisture changes
(DSM) and snow water equivalent (DSWE), groundwater
storage changes (DGW) were calculated as
DGW ¼ DTWS  ðDSM þ DSWEÞ ð1Þ
where, DTWS, DSM and DGW are estimated in centime-
ters. GRACE-derived TWS is composed of all of the
apparent mass variability sources as well as the non-intu-
itive or hidden ones. In this study, surface water and bio-
mass were the two potential mass variability sources that
were excluded. Since it is supposed in the technique that
groundwater would be continuous in space across the tar-
geted region, surface water can be treated as an intersection
of the water table with the land surface (Winter 1998). And
thus surface water variations would be effectively excluded
from the error sources. In order to obtain monthly global
maps for vegetation biomass, Rodell et al. (2005) applied
relationships deduced from field investigations to satellite
derived maps of leaf area index. Compared with the
uncertainty in GRACE-based hydrology, seasonal and
inter-annual biomass changes typically were much smaller.
However, uncertainty led by variations in surface waters
and biomass must be considered part of error sources,
despite the fact that surface waters and biomass were not
exactly quantified in this study. The collected data on mean
monthly SM were preprocessed by the GES DISC group
(Rodell et al. 2004). Cautiousness should be taken when
downloading temporal and spatial (0.25°)-(monthly) reso-
lution Noah data in similar format as the data on GLDAS
are furnished in diverse spatio-temporal resolutions. Soil
moisture aggregate from Noah is tantamount to the total of
SM. The total of SM was estimated from four datasets
representing SM from 0 to 10, 10 to 40, 40 to 100 and 100
to 200 cm, respectively. GIS software was used to process
all data. Finally, GRACE-based estimates of DTWS and
GLDAS-based DSM, EWT or DGW were calculated. Since
the study aim is to identify groundwater trends in peak
summer, GLDAS and GRACE data were obtained online
for such months as May, August and December during the
period from 2002 to 2014.
The yearly DGW consumption comprehensively influ-
enced by agricultural activities and summer was assessed on
the basis of the discrepancy in groundwater storage thickness
(DGW) between high rainfall months and peak summer.
Page 5 of 11 1167
Furthermore, the discrepancy in DGW thickness between
summer and winter seasons was calculated to estimate the
post-monsoon depletion in groundwater storage.
Results and discussion
Precipitation trends in the Loess area of China
The monthly annual average rainfall is 12.25 mm in the
Loess area from 2002 to 2014. The highest monthly rain-
fall, which was observed in the Loess area in July, 2013, is
a total rainfall of 48.53 mm. January and December are the
driest months in the period from 2002 to 2014 with the
least number of rainfall days.
An increasing trend at the rate of 0.04 mm a year is
identified from the rainfall data from 2002 to 2014.
Hence, it is the elevated use of groundwater resources
but not the climate change (particularly the decreasing
rainfall) that is responsible for any depletion in
groundwater storage.
Groundwater storage tendency in the Loess area
Groundwater storage is estimated by GRACE as the
EWT in centimeters (cm). The Loess area groundwater
storage (DGW), shown as the EWT (cm), is shown in
Figs. 2, 3, 4 and 5. Figure 2 illustrates the TWS trends
in the Loess area during the period of 2002–2014. Fig-
ure 3 illustrates the GW trends in the Loess area in the
peak summer (May). However, the GW trends in August
and December are illustrated in Figs. 3 and 4, respec-
tively. The average DGW levels were used to normalize
the DGW data from April 2002 to December 2014
(baseline average). And the baseline was established to
identify the tendency of a particular month data in
comparison with the monthly data in the long term.
Therefore, a minus sign in DGW represents a minus
deviation from the baseline average. Thus, the value of
-0.94 cm (lower than baseline) was the average DGW
for the summer month, while the values of 0.99 and
-1.12 cm were averages for monsoon and winter sea-
sons, respectively. The minus signs show that the DGW
trend is varying negatively. The result is analogous to
that from Wu and Gao (2008) in the groundwater esti-
mates. December had the most groundwater consumption
owing to the extraction of groundwater and less occur-
rence of rainfall days in the winter. The monsoon sea-
sons demonstrate an increase in DGW due to having the
highest rainfall amount (during the month of the
August), 49 % more than May. Thus, a higher storage
than the average can be found in the monsoon season
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Fig. 2 Terrestrial water storage estimated from GRACE and land JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory (in the legend, it is ‘‘jpl’’). Note that
surface models (blue bars). GFZ GeoforschungsZentrum Potsdam; ‘‘200204’’ represents April, 2002
CSR Center for Space Research at University of Texas, Austin;

Fig. 3 Groundwater storage estimated from GRACE and land surface models (May). SM soil moisture; SWE snow water equivalent

Fig. 4 Groundwater storage estimated from GRACE and land surface models (August). SM soil moisture; SWE snow water equivalent

(post-monsoon), while a lower storage than the baseline
in the summer and the winter.
Estimation of depletion rates of groundwater
storage
The mean groundwater variation in thickness is about
-3.89 cm yr-1, during the whole period of 2002–2014.
The maximum consumption rate occurred in May, 2004
(-7.60 cm yr21), while the minimum occurred in
December, 2009 (-0.06 cm yr-1). The groundwater uses
for irrigation have resulted in an average consumption of
759.14 km3 yr-1 in volume over the entire Loess area with
an area of 1,950,410 km2 for the study period.
The Loess area was divided into three sub-areas from
west to east with the Yellow River serving as the boundary.
Those sub-areas were: the Western, Central and Eastern
areas (in Fig. 1). Their average depletion rates of

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Fig. 5 Groundwater storage estimated from GRACE and land surface models (December). SM soil moisture; SWE snow water equivalent
groundwater were -6.68, -4.09 and -0.89 cm yr-1,
respectively. This infers that the Western part of the Loess
area in China showed the largest depletion rate
(-6.68 cm yr-1) in the study period, while the Eastern part
showed the lowest depletion rate (-0.89 cm yr-1). In
recent years, due to a relatively more dense population in
the Western and Central regions, irrigation and public
water consumption are larger than in Eastern areas. These
may be the main reasons for the decline in groundwater
reserves in the western and central areas. Rainfall increase
driven by climate change has increased soil water and
groundwater storage to a certain degree but not enough to
compensate for the long-term decline.
China Geological Survey Bureau has conducted
investigations and evaluations of groundwater resources
in the Loess area of China (Chen et al. 2010b).
According to the investigation’s report from 2001 to
2011, groundwater storage variations in the Loess area of
China showed regional characteristics, and there are
differences in the western, central and eastern areas. The
sustainable use of groundwater resources tends to be
very challenging.
During the period of 2001–2011, the total recharge
showed a decreasing trend and the regional average
groundwater level declined in the study areas. The regional
groundwater level in the northwest arid areas of China
declined faster than in several other major aquifers.
As regard the recommendations of the analysis of rain-
fall–recharge relationships (Wu et al. 1996), 8 % annual
rainfall contributes to groundwater recharges in the Loess
area. With this assumption, the recharged groundwater
volume is 299.41 km3 yr-1. Accordingly, the groundwater
usage exceeds the annual recharge 529.73 km3 yr-1. GW
consumption at such high rates may cause unsustainable
groundwater uses, leading to vulnerability to climate
change, socio-economic stress and unendurable burdens to
water and food security. Likewise, the mean GW con-
sumption rate is -3.89 cm yr-1 from summer to winter
(between 2002 and 2014). The minimum consumption rate
Page 7 of 11 1167
occurred in 2003 (1.13 cm yr-1), while the maximum
occurred in 2004 (-7.60 cm yr-1).
GW depletion resulted from the comprehensive effect of
climatic and anthropogenic causes. However, the anthro-
pogenic activities, such as watershed surface changes and
the rapid development of economic and social, are the main
causes of groundwater depletion. The watershed surface
changes significantly in the Loess areas of China. Lakes
atrophy area accounted for about 18 % of the total area of
the lake; wetland area is reduced by about 28 %; forest
coverage increased by about 10 %; irrigated area from 18.5
to 51.8 % of total arable land area; and urbanization level
rose from 19 % in 1980 to 47 % in 1980. In Beijing, for
example, urban population rapidly increased from 12.57
million in 1999 to 19.61 million in 2010, a 56 % increase.
Alleviating future irrigation water stress
in the Loess Area
The change in groundwater level in the Loess area is deeply
affected by various factors: anthropogenic causes, geolog-
ical structure, climate change and topography; it also shows
a strong spatial correlation. Such spatial correlation is
weakened by the impact of human economic activities.
Zhang et al. (2013) analyzed the overall spatial distribution
of water resources in the Loess area. It was found that the
change in the groundwater level showed a substantially
declining trend from the Southeast to the Northwest, and the
rate gradually decreased. Figure 6 shows the spatial varia-
tions of groundwater in the Loess area beginning from
August, 2002 to August, 2014 based on the GRACE satel-
lite image datasets, in which the change trends are similar to
that of Zhang et al. (2013) research results. It should be
noted that Fig. 6 reflects changes in the spatial distribution
in the change of groundwater levels; the value of each
spatial grid position is relative to the average within the
range of the grid, rather than the true high groundwater
equivalent. The color of each grid point reflects the changes
in the groundwater amount in the corresponding location.
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Fig. 6 Spatial variations of groundwater in the Loess area from August, 2002 to August, 2014. Maps show the variations for 6 years

Fig. 7 Monthly changes in equivalent groundwater thickness derived from GRACE gravity satellite data in the Loess area and the change in
groundwater level derived from two observation wells in the Yinchuan Plain

The color contrast needs to be carefully understood as
regards the different grid points. For example, the diagram
with a blue dot indicates the point below the average of
13 years’ water levels; the red dot indicates the point above
the average of the 13 years. There may be more ground-
water storage in the blue areas than in the red areas.
Figure 7 shows the monthly changes in EWT of
groundwater derived from GRACE gravity satellite data in
the Loess area and the change in groundwater level derived
from two observation wells (6402230033 and
64022020005, which are shown in Fig. 1) in the Yinchuan
Plain during the period of 2002–2010. The changes in
groundwater level at the monitoring wells show a down-
ward trend, which is similar to that of the GRACE at the
same spatial location. The results of groundwater amount
change based on GRACE and are closely related with the
soil and snow water. In this paper, soil water and snow data
derived from GLDAS global data were used; its accuracy
has a certain effect on the results of estimated accuracy on
groundwater change. However, due to the small number of

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groundwater monitoring wells with long-term water level
data, further evaluation of their accuracy is currently
unable to be conducted.
In China, irrigation water use has grown rapidly. Water
shortage in China, particularly in the north and northwest
of China, is very serious. While the water shortage in this
region is severe, irrigation water use efficiency is only
about 20 %. Excessive irrigation in Ningxia has had a
significant influence on downstream water users along the
Yellow River. It is widely believed that an increase in the
agricultural water use efficiency is the key to mitigating
water shortage and reducing environmental problems.
Numerous studies have shown that groundwater inter-
ventions are necessary to promote groundwater recharge
and increase GW to ensure water availability in the future.
Sustainable groundwater development plans can be plotted
if groundwater recharge and storage are better estimated at
macro- and micro-watershed scales. But estimates on larger
scale are currently unavailable owing to limited field data.
Therefore, the groundwater intervention plans should be
focused on increasing groundwater resources to fight
against steady decreases, as well as with agricultural
practice improvements. Due to increased water scarcity,
the irrigated area is unlikely to expand in the dry land
region of the Loess area. Good irrigation scheduling
requires the timing of irrigation and the amount of water
applied to match actual field conditions. Furthermore,
water-saving irrigation depends on adopting water-saving
techniques in the delivery and application of the water.
Limited irrigation is a system of crop management in
which dryland cultivation is integrated with a limited water
supply in an irrigation network that is only able to supply
part of the water needed for crop growth (Shan and Deng
2000). Limited irrigation is possible to develop water-
saving information systems for a precise control of the
timing and quantity of irrigation water, and thus, limited
irrigation can be expected to be a dominant form of crop
cultivation in the future. In other words, it is to raise the
following ratios to their maximum: soil-stored water con-
tent/precipitation volume; water consumption/soil storage
of water; transpiration/water consumption; biomass
yield/transpiration and economic benefit. The upgrading of
these hydro-pedagogical and plant parameters is the key
issue to be solved. The results in this study will improve
the comprehending of the present water consumption and
the accessible GW that can be fed in artificial ways.
GRACE provides a record of variations in total terrestrial
water storage (defined as all of the snow, surface water, soil
moisture and groundwater) across the globe (Voss et al.
2013). Recent studies have demonstrated that water storage
changes can be inferred from the GRACE data with suf-
ficient resolution and accuracy to benefit regional water
resources management (Chen et al. 2010). For example,
Page 9 of 11 1167
GRACE data have been used to estimate rates of ground-
water depletion, flood potential, drought and reservoir
storage changes (Wang et al. 2011). GRACE, most espe-
cially, can give timely data for areas of sparse monitoring
data.
According to the above analysis, GRACE satellite has
unique advantages in the aspects of measuring land surface
water storage changes; it also provides a new perspective
for the study of global, regional or basin water balance.
However, GRACE satellite data also has some limitations
on predicting the change trends in water resources:
1. Low spatial resolution is suitable for large-scale global
or regional. The smaller it measures the area, the less
gravity data there is. If the area is less than 193,000
square kilometers, then, calculation of the groundwater
storage is very difficult (Rowlands et al. 2005). The
scaling transformation needs to be conducted for small
areas. How to further enhance the spatial resolution is
still an issue for GRACE studies.
2. The validation and accuracy assessment are relatively
difficult. The validation for GRACE is mostly con-
ducted through the land surface and hydrological
model or comparative analysis. Several studies show
that the results of GRACE and hydrological model
inversion agree well, but their differences can not be
ignored. On the other hand, hydrological models
themselves are not able to fully inverse the amount
of change in hydrology, on the basis of which, the
comparison is controversial. At the same time, due to
the lack of real independence of observations for the
global hydrological signal change, the variation of the
observed hydrological information GRACE obtained
can not be explained correctly.
Although, the spatial resolution of GRACE satellite data
is low for the Loess area of China, it is a large area
(1,950,410 km2), and results obtained by this method in the
field of hydrology and water resources have a very
important reference value. Therefore, strengthening the
research efforts of the method will have a very important
practical significance in promoting the development of
hydrological sciences.
Conclusions
Temporal changes in groundwater reserves were evaluated
based on the GRACE satellite gravity image data in the
Loess area for 2002–2014. The groundwater reserves in the
month, and annual changes were analyzed and compared
with the corresponding rainfall data; soil water and snow
data derived from GLDAS global data were used to assist
the analysis. The following conclusions can be drawn:
123
1167 Page 10 of 11
The results of changes in groundwater reserves retrieved
from the GRACE gravity satellite have better trend con-
sistency with the changes in measured groundwater levels,
especially in annual rate of changes. In a certain case, it
was shown that GRACE satellite gravity data can be used
to calculate serial changes in groundwater reserves in the
Loess area. This provides a calculation method for the
volume changes and the trends of groundwater resources in
the Loess area.
The temporal and spatial variations in groundwater
reserves in the Loess area were calculated by GRACE
satellite gravity data from 2002 to 2014. The results
showed that: From 2002 to 2014, the overall groundwater
reserves in the Loess area decreased, and the rate of
decrease gradually increased, reaching a peak in 2014. It
can be seen that in the 13-year period, the overall trend
changes in groundwater reserves was gradually decreasing
by a small rate (-3.89 cm yr-1). With the development of
industry and agriculture, groundwater over-exploitation has
resulted in a declining water table.
Increasing public water supplies and agricultural
production in Northwest China have been the key factor
causing groundwater depletion. This study alarmingly
indicates that groundwater declined at an average rate of
-3.89 cm yr-1 across the Loess area between 2002 and
2014. The maximum depletion rate occurred during
2004 (-7.60 cm yr-1). To formulate more effective
plans on groundwater management, an approach cover-
ing interdisciplinary studies is imperative to quantify
reasonable groundwater uses in agriculture and enhances
artificial water storage across the Loess area in China.
Future methods include climate projection scenarios,
cropping pattern scenarios, governance of groundwater
and social stress for groundwater while plotting net
groundwater demand and groundwater use projects.
Given that remote sensing data are economical and
useful, they can be used jointly with physical mea-
surements in the field to promote groundwater estima-
tion methodology.
Acknowledgments This study was jointly supported by the National
Basic Research Program of China (973 Program): The formation,
evolution mechanism and mitigation of loess geohazards and geo-
hazard-chain (Grant No. 2014CB744700), Program for National
Nature Science Foundation for Young Scholars of China: the ten-
sional crack expansion mechanism and the influence effects to land-
slide in loess plateau edge (Grant No: 41302250), Project of science
and technology of social development in Shaanxi Province (Grant No.
2016SF-411) and the Open Research Fund of State Key Laboratory of
Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China
Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Grant
IWHR-SKL-201510. The authors thank Dr. Hui Qian for supplying
groundwater level data. The authors are also grateful to the anony-
mous reviewers for their constructive comments to polish the
manuscript.
123
Environ Earth Sci (2016) 75:1167
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