Evapotranspiration (ET) is an important channel for water transport and energy conversion in land–air systems, and the spatial quantification of actual ET is crucial for water resource management and scheduling in arid areas. Using the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) model and satellite images, this study determined the actual ET during the growing season of 2020 in the Shiyang River Basin of northwest China and investigated the driving mechanism of ET using a principal component regression. The results showed that the ET obtained using the Penman-Monteith equation exhibited a good correlation with the ET estimated using SEBAL (R² = 0.85). Additionally, SEBAL overestimated ET to some extent compared to the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) ET (MOD16) product. The daily ET (ET_d) in the Shiyang River Basin showed a single-peak variation during the growing season, with the maximum value occurring around mid-July. Spatially, the ET gradually increased from northeast to southwest with the variation in the land use/land cover (LULC) type. Among the six LULC types, ET_d was higher for woodland, water body, and grassland, all exceeding 5.0 mm/d; farmland and built-up land had ET_d close to 3.9 mm/d; and barren land had the lowest ET_d of below 2.5 mm/d. Furthermore, the standardized regression coefficients indicated that the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is the main driving factor influencing ET. Overall, the SEBAL model has the potential to estimate spatially actual ET, and the study results provide a scientific basis for water resource accounting and hydrological analysis in arid areas.

This study analyzed change and spatial patterns of land use in Shanxi from 2000 to 2020. The drivers of land use and cover change (LUCC) in cultivated lands, forest lands, grasslands, and rural construction areas were explored from four dimensions, including population, natural environment, location traffic, and economic development. The CA-Markov model was used to simulate the scenarios of natural growth (NG), ecological protection (EP), economic development (ED), food security (FS), ecological protection–economic development (EP-ED), and ecological protection–food security (EP-FS) in 2030. The results indicated that: (1) The conversion to built-up areas primarily dominated the LUCC processes, and their expansion was mainly to the detriment of the cultivated lands and grasslands during 2000–2020. (2) From 2000 to 2020, population, economy, and land productivity were the main factors of LUCC; the interaction of drivers for the increase of cultivated lands, forest lands, grasslands, and rural construction areas showed enhancement. (3) Under the NG, ED, and EP-ED scenarios, the rural construction areas would have increased significantly, while under the FS and EP-FS scenarios, the cultivated lands would only just have increased. These future land use scenarios can inform decision-makers to make sound decisions that balance socio-economic, ecological, and food security benefits.

In order to optimize the appropriate drought resistance measures in the implementation of high-efficiency and intensive production of maize seed, in 2018 and 2019, maize cultivation experiments with different drought resistance measures were carried out in the arid area of northwest China, including water retention agent (SA), white plastic film mulch (WF), black plastic film mulch (BF), straw mulch (SM), and open ground flat seed as control (CK). A total of five treatments were conducted. Ten specific indicators contained four types of attributes, namely the yield, quality, water use efficiency (WUE), and economic benefit of maize seed production, aimed at constructing a multilevel evaluation system. To improve the reliability of evaluation results, subjective and objective weights of indexes were calculated using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and entropy weight method (EWM), respectively. Then, based on the integrated weighting method of game theory (GT), the combined weights of subjective and objective unity were obtained. Finally, with the help of the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), a comprehensive benefit evaluation model was established to screen out the optimal drought resistance measures. Compared with CK, different drought resistance measures significantly improved the grain quality of seeds-production corn, and the average annual yield and WUE of black and white film treatments were improved by 49.57% and 42.97% and by 65.67% and 58.21%, respectively. This proved that black film mulching (BF) could significantly increase the yield and WUE of maize seed production and effectively improve grain quality, which could be used as the best drought-resistant cultivation mode for maize seed planting in Hexi and similar areas.