%0 Journal Article %A WANG Xue %A LI Xiubin %A XIN Liangjie %T Impact of the shrinking winter wheat sowing area on agricultural water consumption in the Hebei Plain %D 2013 %R 10.11821/xb201305010 %J Acta Geographica Sinica %P 694-707 %V 68 %N 5 %X This study firstly analyzed the shrinkage of winter wheat and the changes of cropping systems in the Hebei Plain from 1998 to 2010 based on the agricultural statistic data of 11 cities and meteorological data, including daily temperature, precipitation, water vapor, wind speed and minimum relative humidity data from 22 meteorological stations, and then calculated the water deficit and irrigation water resources required by different cropping systems, as well as the irrigation water resources conserved as a result of cropping system changes, using crop coefficient method and every ten-day effective precipitation estimation method. The results are shown as follows. 1) The sowing areas of winter wheat in all the 11 cities in the Hebei Plain shrunk during the study period. The shrinkage rate was 16.07% and the total shrinkage area amounted to 49.62×104 ha. The shrinkage was most serious in the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan Metropolitan Region, with a rate of 47.23%. 2) The precipitation fill rate of winter wheat was only 20%-30%, while that of both spring maize and summer maize exceeded 50%. The irrigation water resources demanded by the winter wheat-summer maize double cropping system ranged from 400 mm to 530 mm, while those demanded by the spring maize single cropping system ranged from 160 mm to 210 mm. 3) The water resources conserved as a result of the winter wheat sowing area shrinkage during the study period were about 15.96×108 m3/a, accounting for 27.85% of those provided for Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei by the first phase of the Middle Route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project. %U https://www.geog.com.cn/EN/10.11821/xb201305010