1 School of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Chang’an University, Xi’an 710054, China; 2 School of Nature Resources, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE68583-0996, USA
Abstract Groundwater is a significant component of the hydrological cycle in arid and semi-arid areas. Its
evapotranspiration is an important part of the water budget because many plants are groundwater-dependent.
To restore the degraded ecosystems, the need is pressing to further our understanding of the groundwater
evapotranspiration (ETg) in arid and semi-arid areas. This study employed the White method to estimate ETg at
four sites in the Mu Us Sandy Land in northern China, and the four sites are covered by Salix psammophila (SP
site), Artemisia ordosica (AO site), Poplar alba (PA site), and Carex enervis (CE site), respectively. The depth of
groundwater table and the duration of drainage were taken into account in calculating the specific yield (Sy) to
improve the accuracy of the ETg estimats. Our results showed that from late May to early November 2013 the
ETg were 361.87 (SP site), 372.53 (AO site), 597.86 (PA site) and 700.76 mm (CE site), respectively. The
estimated ETg rate was also species-dependent and the descending order of the ETg rate for the four vegetation
was: C. enervis, P. alba, A. ordosica, and S. psammophila. In addition, the depth of groundwater table has an
obvious effect on the ETg rate and the effect varied with the vegetation types. Furthermore, the
evapotranspiration for the vegetation solely relying on the water supply from unsaturated layers above the
groundwater table was much less than that for the vegetation heavily relying on the water supply from shallow
aquifers.
The National Natural Science Foundation of China (41072184, 41472220) and the
Special Fund for Basic Scientific Research of Central Colleges, Chang’an University (310829162015).
CHENG Donghui,DUAN Jibo,QIAN Kang et al. Groundwater evapotranspiration under psammophilous vegetation covers in the Mu Us Sandy Land, northern China[J]. Journal of Arid Land, 2017, 9(1): 98-108.
2017, Vol. 9 
