Vegetation restoration in water-limited regions typically increases evapotranspiration (ET) while reducing runoff. Over the past four decades, Daihai Lake in China’s northwest inland river basin has experienced significant shrinkage. Previous studies attribute this primarily to climate change and water resource exploitation, yet the impact of vegetation dynamics remains insufficiently examined. This study analyzed changes in the water budget across different vegetation types in the Daihai Lake Basin, based on remote sensing-derived precipitation and ET data, and employed correlation analysis to examine the relationships between environmental factors (such as climate change, afforestation projects, and water-saving irrigation) and lake shrinkage. Our findings revealed that afforestation has expanded forest cover by 69.42 km2 since 2000, accounting for 73.95% of the total forest area. Notably, forest ET demonstrated the strongest negative correlation (r = −0.89, p < 0.001) with lake area among all vegetation types. Grasslands emerged as the primary water-surplus vegetation, contributing 81.34% to the basin’s total water surplus. The synergistic effects of precipitation reduction, temperature increase, and enhanced ET from forest expansion drove the shrinkage of the lake. These results highlight the need for science-based vegetation management in arid and semi-arid regions, where we recommend adopting shrub-grass combined restoration approaches to enhance the sustainability of ecological restoration.
Wang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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