Analysis of water footprint and consumption pattern in Gansu Province

Increasing shortage of water resources is an uncontroversial fact with the population growth and the economy development in Gansu Province of Northwest China.How to alleviate the pressing of water resource is a major issue faced by decision-makers.Water footprint research explores a new viewpoint to water resource management.In this paper,Gansu Province is taken as a case study to investigate the variation of water footprint and its relationship with the consumption pattern variation since 1989.The results indicate the virtual water consumed almost decreases year by year.Regardless of some degraded water enviro nment,the results show that the water footprint doesn't increased as expected,or even remains at 220×10⁸-240×10⁸m³/a,while the population increases,the economy scalesup and the consumption level goes up.The paper also inspects the relationship between the virtual water consumption,the water footprint and the consumption pattern variation since 1989,using the Shannon-Weaver equation.We find that the increase of the consumption diversities can reduce the water footprint,and lessen the stress of water resource system.Some policy implications of the water footprint and the consumption patterns are discussed in the last section.