Small-scale rainwater cistern system for rainwater collection in north-western China

Abstract

Despite the overall rapid economical development during the last decade in China, a number of regions in remote areas are still striving to alleviate poverty. These regions are commonly characterized by low level of industrialization, poorly developed agriculture, which almost entirely relies on climate situations. Water has often been a bottle-neck in the development of the agricultural, industrial and social-economical sectors of the region. Among 30 provinces and autonomous regions of China, Gansu has the lowest per-capita income being ranked as the second from the bottom. Dingxi County, located in the central part of Gansu Province is the poorest area in the province, thus even in the whole China. According to 1997 economical statistics, the annual income per-capita in Dingxi County was only some 75 US$ which is much lower than the national average level.


The poverty of Dingxi County can be traced to the adverse natural conditions and harsh climate, especially severe water shortage. Drought, low temperature and hail are considered as the disastrous threats to agriculture. The worst fact is that the scarce rainfall is most often concentrated during the period of July to September, often in the form of storms, but the irrigation period for crops is from April to June. Thus, drought becomes non-avoided natural calamity almost every year. Moreover, heavy storms occurring in Summer not only worsen the water shortage in Spring, but also cause severe soil erosion of cultivated farming land and ecological unbalance due to the scarce vegetation and fertile soil loss (Wu 1991). The mean corn production could be as low as 1,000 kg per hectare due to water shortage. Consequently, the severe water shortage worsens the poverty situations of the area. The farmers among the 86% of the 440 000 total population in Dingxi are still living under very harsh basic living conditions without guarantee for drinking water in drought years.

In drought years, which often means no rainfall at all for almost 3 months, the only water resources are deeply-buried groundwater and stored rainwater collected in the previous rainy season. However, groundwater resources has also showed a depleting tendency with large decreasing of groundwater tables. With depth of hundreds of meters below the land surface, it is too difficult to be effectively utilized by farmers. Under such inauspicious situations, the critical issue for the local people is how to get drinking water for survival and keep animals alive rather than agricultural activities. When the serious drought took place in 1995, for instance, 40% of the farmer families had to rely on the national emergency food aid for living meanwhile drinking water supply of most population in Dingxi County was distributed through the transportation of water tanks. The provincial government has to make a special budget every year with drinking water transportation for Dingxi and other counties (see Government document 1995).

Definitely, water shortage is the major obstacle for the local economic development and a crucial factor for the cause of poverty, which, in turn, obviously contributed to the fact that the region is the most underdeveloped area in China not only in terms of agriculture and industry, but also the social, educational as well as health conditions.

In recent year, the practice of small scale rainwater cistern system in the area has showed very promising results (e. g., Huang 1997). With an simple and cost effective technique, a cistern can store around 70% of the rainfall water collected by a corresponding paved mini-catchment. The successful example of such family based water cistern showed that a simple, small cistern, by collecting the rainfall in the rainy days, can provide enough fresh water supply for the whole year for a normal family including animal feeding and necessary backyard irrigation. A lot of problems remain concerning water cistern systems. Such as water quality related problems (water purification, fresh-keeping), water seepage and infiltration and soil erosion etc (Wang 1996).

• author: Zhang, Linus ; Zhu, Kun and Berndtsson, Ronny
• organization: Division of Water Resources Engineering
• publishing date: 1998
• type: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
• publication status: published
• subject: Water Engineering
• host publication: Proceedings of the International Seminar Rain water harvesting and management of small reservoirs in arid and semiarid areas : an expert meeting within the EU-INCO collaboration HYDROMED (Program for research on hill reservoirs in the semiarid zone of the Mediterranean periphery). Lund University, 29 June - 2 July, 1998 - an expert meeting within the EU-INCO collaboration HYDROMED (Program for research on hill reservoirs in the semiarid zone of the Mediterranean periphery). Lund University, 29 June - 2 July, 1998
• series title: Report
• volume: 3222
• pages: 8 pages
• publisher: Water Resources Engineering, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
• conference name: Rain water harvesting and management of small reservoirs in arid and semiarid areas
• conference location: Lund, Sweden
• conference dates: 1998-06-29 - 1998-07-02
• ISSN: 1101-9824
• language: English
• LU publication?: yes
• id: 692a4329-57cf-47ce-9a7d-1727a43a9ede
• date added to LUP: 2025-02-15 19:58:56
• date last changed: 2025-04-08 15:27:33