Date of Award
12-31-2015
Document Type
Campus Access Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Environmental Sciences/Environmental, Earth & Ocean Sciences
First Advisor
David Terkla
Second Advisor
Ellen Douglas
Third Advisor
David Timmons
Abstract
The Yellow River is the second longest river in China and water scarcity is a real threat in several sections of its watershed. The purpose of this thesis is to promote water use efficiency and conservation by investigating the feasibility of linking upstream and downstream communities in China through some sort of water market scheme. A distributed water balance model with an irrigation module was used to estimate the available water supply and crop water requirements for the two case study communities. A comparison of reported water withdrawals with model-estimated crop water requirements shows that upstream irrigators withdraw far more water than required by their crops, while the downstream users are not able to withdraw even enough to meet crop water demand. This presents an opportunity for establishment of a new water management practice. A Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) survey was conducted both in upstream and downstream communities to understand the farmers’ current economic situation and to help determine appropriate water pricing scheme. Quantitative analysis of the WTP survey data leads to policy suggestions for improving the allocation of Yellow River resources.
Recommended Citation
Sun, Luqin, "Willingness to Pay for Water Efficiency Improvements by Upstream and Downstream Users: A Case Study in the Yellow River Basin in China" (2015). Graduate Doctoral Dissertations. 239.
https://scholarworks.umb.edu/doctoral_dissertations/239
Comments
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