Artificial Rainwater Harvesting System and the Using for Agriculture on Loess Plateau of China

Artificial rainwater harvesting system (ARHS) is a new way to increase water supply in semi-arid area, and has developed rapidly recent years in northwestern China. Not only it used in domestic supply, but also in agricultural as supply irrigation. More than 2 million water cellars have been built in Loess Plateau of China. In this paper, based on 5 years’ related experiments, field engineering and trails, the author showed a case of practice research results in Dingxi experimental station, Gansu province. It was selected two kinds of material using land surface treatment for rainwater collecting, High strength and water stability Earth Consolidator (HEC) and asphalt fiberglass felt, which water harvesting efficiency (WHE) reached to 86%—91% and 85%—90%, respectively. It analyzed three kinds of water cellar structure, roundness shape, column shape and flask shape with red pastern mud. According to theory of limited irrigation, the experiments indicated that drip irrigation under plastic film (DIUP) is the best method at key stage of water requirement of crops. The yield and water use efficiency (WUE) of spring wheat at jointing stage with DIUP was 1900kg/hm and 6.03kg/hm mm, respectively, which is higher 111.1 % and 69.4% than that of control, the effect on corn was more markedly. On the other hand, it gave out a practice demonstration for artificial rainwater harvesting system in slope land area, and showed the benefit of the model.