{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,26]],"date-time":"2026-03-26T06:25:57Z","timestamp":1774506357818,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":79,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"23","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,24]],"date-time":"2019-11-24T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1574553600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"the National Key Research and Development Program of China","award":["No. 2016YFB0501404"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["No. 2016YFB0501404"]}]},{"name":"the National Key Research and Development Program of China","award":["No. 2016YFA0600103"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["No. 2016YFA0600103"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"the National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["No. 41331173"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["No. 41331173"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Remote Sensing"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Global climate changes have increased the imbalance of water resources, especially in northern China, which comprises typical arid and semiarid regions. Large-scale afforestation has been implemented over the past three decades in northern China. The ecosystem water use efficiency (WUE) connects the carbon cycle and water cycle of the terrestrial ecosystems and is defined as the ratio of the gross primary productivity (GPP) to the evapotranspiration. However, there are still an insufficient number of studies on the impact of the afforestation on the WUE. In this study, we applied the random forest (RF) model to explore the impacts of climate and nonclimate factors on the WUE in northern China. The results showed that in areas with high precipitation, the forests had the highest WUE, while in the arid areas, the croplands had the highest WUE. Of the total area, 44.34% showed a significant increase, and 5.89% showed a significant decrease in the WUE from 1982\u20132015 in northern China. The main driving factors for the changes in the WUE were climate factors, including the precipitation, temperature and solar radiation, which contributed to approximately 84% of the WUE trends, while human activities, such as afforestation, contributed to approximately 16% of the WUE trends. Overall, although the climate had a larger impact on the WUE dynamics than the human activities, our results suggested that the impacts of the afforestation programs on forest carbon and water cycles should be considered in the context of climate change.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/rs11232766","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,25]],"date-time":"2019-11-25T03:10:00Z","timestamp":1574651400000},"page":"2766","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":49,"title":["Effects of Climate Factors and Human Activities on the Ecosystem Water Use Efficiency throughout Northern China"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"11","author":[{"given":"Xiaozheng","family":"Du","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Jointly Sponsored by Beijing Normal University and Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100875, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0155-6735","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xiang","family":"Zhao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Jointly Sponsored by Beijing Normal University and Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100875, China"},{"name":"Beijing Engineering Research Center for Global Land Remote Sensing Products, Institute of Remote Sensing Science and Engineering, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China"}]},{"given":"Tao","family":"Zhou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5413-0247","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Bo","family":"Jiang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Jointly Sponsored by Beijing Normal University and Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100875, China"},{"name":"Beijing Engineering Research Center for Global Land Remote Sensing Products, Institute of Remote Sensing Science and Engineering, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China"}]},{"given":"Peipei","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Geography and Tourism, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241002, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4638-3743","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Donghai","family":"Wu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China"}]},{"given":"Bijian","family":"Tang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Division of Environment and Sustainability, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon 999077, Hong Kong, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,24]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"35","DOI":"10.1016\/j.cosust.2011.12.002","article-title":"Water security for a planet under pressure: Interconnected challenges of a changing world call for sustainable solutions","volume":"4","author":"Bogardi","year":"2012","journal-title":"Curr. 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