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An Ecopartnership Project Promoting Sustainable Water Resource Management in Qinghai Province, China China is undergoing dramatic economic development and rapid land use change that relies on vast quantities of fresh water reserves. In addition to providing enough water for industry and agriculture, China faces the challenge of managing drinking water and wastewater in its rapidly expanding cities and many isolated rural areas. Fortunately, Chinese leaders and scholars have identified environmental sustainability, broadly, and water resources management, specifically, as key goals for supporting long-term development. The Province of Qinghai, one of the largest (721,120 km2) provinces in China, is a land rich in natural resources related to water, minerals, and terrestrial ecosystem services. Qinghai, with its vast mountain ranges, numerous glaciers, and broad meadows and plains, is also a land of natural extremes in precipitation, elevation, and temperature. The headwaters for three major rivers in China: the Yellow River, the Yangtze River and the Mekong River, originate in this province. These rivers ultimately provide water to hundreds of millions of people downstream, making Qinghai known as the “water tower” or “water reservoir” of China, and elevating water quality and water availability in Qinghai from a regional issue to one of national concern. Factors affecting these critical water resources include shrinking glaciers, degradation of wetlands and grasslands, a warming climate, and plant species loss. With a population of approximately 5.5 million, Qinghai is a melting pot of cultural diversity, where nearly half the population lives in the capital city of Xining, but also where a large percentage of people live in small rural villages scattered over Qinghai, in regions with great diversity in climate and geography. Despite the abundance of natural resources, Qinghai maintains one of the smallest economies among Chinese Provinces. Although the future promises significant economic growth in the province, changes in climate and land use will impact the population in rural communities and the capital city in significantly different ways, requiring a broad portfolio of potential solutions adhering to sustainability principles. Fostered by the collaboration between the Utah-Qinghai Ecopartnership (UQEP) and the Purdue University-led Ecopartnership for Environmental Sustainability (USCEES), a scientific team has been assembled to address critical challenges related to water resources in Qinghai Province. The team, which includes faculty from Purdue University, Qinghai Normal University (QHNU), and Qinghai University (QHU), launched their collaboration in the summer of 2014 with three specific projects: water management in Xining city, agricultural and grazing intensity impacts on water and soil quality, and application of inexpensive drinking water treatment technology in small rural communities. Details describing the inexpensive drinking water treatment project are as follows. Inexpensive drinking water treatment technology for small rural communities In many rural villages in Qinghai Province, the only source of fresh water is that which is collected from rainfall on roofs and stored in underground cisterns installed at each home for subsequent use. This water is susceptible to particle-born contaminants and pathogens and poses a significant health risk to people in these communities. Purdue professors Chad Jafvert (Lyles School of Civil Engineering) and John Howarter (School of Mechanical Engineering) have re-engineered an ancient technology for clarifying the water: slow sand filtration (SSF). The reengineered SSF system consist of inexpensive five-gallon plastic buckets, sieved sand, plastic tubing and a specialized porous plate all designed for use in rural communities with limited financial resources. The SSF systems improve water quality through microbial driven processes that Slow Sand Filter Similar break down dissolved and colloidal organics, reducing the turbidity of the to the Model Used in water to drinking water standards. Qinghai In July 2014, Dr. Jafvert, funded by the USCEES Visiting Scholars Travel Grant, traveled to Qinghai with a team from Purdue to oversee the installation of SSF systems in two villages currently relying on rainwater collection for home water use. After initial training and installation of the filters, Dr. Jafvert worked with collaborators from QHNU to formalize a monitoring system for water quality analysis, and also held lectures on water chemistry for QHNU professors and students. Overall, this water purification project already has positively impacted the lives of six families. Within just a few days of SSF installation, the homeowners could visibly see improvement in their household water. Even more, the villagers informed the team that their SSF systems were a topic of discussion among the community, as many other villagers wanted to install the filtration systems in their homes. More SSF systems are planned for construction and installation in the next years of this multi-year project, with further sponsorship from the Provincial Government anticipated. This project was sponsored Purdue’s Discovery Park USCEES, Purdue Center for the Environment, and the Purdue Water Community. For more information about the U.S. China Ecopartnership for Environmental Sustainability please see: http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/ecopartnership/. U.S. Department of State Ecopartnership web site: http://ecopartnerships.lbl.gov. Evaluation of Ecosystem Services in the Qinghai Province, China “Ecosystem Services” is a term used to describe the benefits that people obtain from the ecosystems. Grasslands specifically provide a number of services including delivery of food, carbon storage, nutrient and sediment regulation, biodiversity, and tourism. The Province of Qinghai, located in the northwestern part of China, supports vast areas of grasslands (~360,000 km2, approximately half of the area of Qinghai province). Among these grasslands, the majority are high-cold meadow and steppe, which have been mostly overgrazed and experienced moderate to serious degradation. Grassland degradation has great impacts on ecosystem services and may cause species loss, poor productivity, and degradation of flood, nutrient, and sediment regulation. The U.S.-China Ecopartnership for Environmental Sustainability is working with Qinghai University and Qinghai Normal University, as part of a collaboration with the Utah-Qinghai Ecopartnership, to address issues of grassland degradation and associated impacts in this region. As part of this collaboration, Ph.D. student Ms. Rebecca Logsdon (Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University) along with her thesis advisor Professor Indrajeet Chaubey, has focused part of her research on evaluating the impacts of over-grazing on ecosystem service provision in Qinghai using process-based biophysical models such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). In June 2014, Ms. Logsdon traveled to Qinghai to begin a project in Xining with Professor Huilan Shi of Qinghai University and scholars from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Insitutue for Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research and the Northwest Institute for Plateau Biology. Additionally, researchers from the Qinghai Grassland Research Center, Qinghai University for Nationalities, Qinghai Academy of Animal and Veterinary Science, and Qinghai Normal University will be taking part in the study. Ms. Logsdon’s visit was geared toward primary data collection from remote field sites in Huangnan prefecture. She and her colleagues engaged local herders to learn about how they view the changing states of their ecosystems, what observations they had about declining ecosystem services, and how their management of the land has adapted. These data, along with modeling outputs from researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, were essential for her paramatization of the models she is using to predict how changing management regimes could amplify or mitgate ecosystem stresses. She will continue partnering with Qinghai researchers on this project and her work will lay the groundwork for the next stages of the project which will involve detailed geochemical analyses of soil cores from the region. Ms. Logsdon will be graduating from Purdue with her PhD in December of 2014. From left to right: 1) Group photo with Mongolian herders and researches from the local grassland research center; 2) Professor Yang from Qinghai University for Nationalities showing Geographic Information System data available in the study area; 3) Group picture in one of the degraded grassland sites. This project was sponsored Purdue’s Discovery Park USCEES, Purdue Center for the Environment, and the Purdue Water Community. For more information about the U.S. China Ecopartnership for Environmental Sustainability please see: http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/ecopartnership/. U.S. Department of State Ecopartnership web site: http://ecopartnerships.lbl.gov. Urban and Community Water Planning and Management in Qinghai, China China’s National Plan on New Urbanization (2014-2020) includes dramatic increases in the rate of urbanization, with considerable impacts on over 100 million citizens. This push for urbanization is occurring throughout China but it has particular impact in relatively underdeveloped western areas, including the Province of Qinghai in northwestern China. Qinghai is one of the largest provinces (721,120 km2) in China, but has one of the lowest populations (5.03 million). Its lands are rich in cultural, ecological and mineral resources, and it includes the headwaters for three of the major rivers in Asia: the Yellow River, the Yangtze River and the Lancang (Mekong) River. Dramatic land-use change, associated with rapid urbanization of its major city, Xining, and increased grazing pressures have created challenges related to water security for both the province and for the billion people who live downstream along these major rivers. Thoughtful land use planning and development are critical for the future of water resources in Qinghai. (From www.tibet3.com) For over two decades, planners and decision makers in the USA have been using a decision support tool called L-THIA (Long-Term Hydrologic Impact Assessment) to incorporate water resource issues into the decision-making process for effective land use planning. L-THIA was developed at Purdue University specifically to meet the needs of planners and decision makers in areas with urban land use change, and is an advanced decision support tool that is now available through an online interface (https://engineering.purdue.edu/~lthia/). Based on a well-respected hydrologic model, using only data that are easily available to planners, and leveraging today’s GIS (Geographic Information System) computational capability, L-THIA simulates the impact of different decisions for land use change on water resources in terms of long-term runoff and surface water quality. Because of its easy accessibility, L-THIA has been widely adopted by many regional and local communities in the USA as an important tool to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability. With L-THIA, communities can minimize the impacts of land use change on key water resource issues. There is a pressing need for this sort of water resources planning tool in the largest, most rapidly urbanizing country in the world, China. The original creators of LTHIA, Purdue Professors Jonathan Harbor (Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences) and Bernard Engel (Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering) and Mr. Feng Yu (PhD student of Professor Harbor), are now developing a version of L-THIA specifically focused on land use management practices and decisions in China (LTHIA-C). As part of an integrated water resources management collaboration between the UtahQinghai Ecopartnership and U.S.-China Ecopartnership for Environmental Sustainability (USCEES), the L-THIA-C team includes a partnership with academic colleagues at Qinghai Normal University and provincial and municipal government offices in Qinghai. The L-THIA-C team is developing a prototype model that can be used for water resource professionals working in Xining City, the capital of Qinghai. The L-THIA-C project is the first of a series of urban water management and pollution monitoring tools and programs planned for a wide cooperation through the Ecopartnerships. Leading the collaborative effort for the partners in China is Professor Xia Zhao from Qinghai Normal University. Her program specializes in water pollution loading evaluation and water quality modeling of the Huangshui River Basin in Qinghai Province. “A critical factor in the long-term success of this program is frequent communication and a willingness for long-term faculty and student exchange” according to Prof. Timothy Filley, the U.S. Director for the Ecopartnership for Environmental Sustainability. In the past year Purdue Researchers have made two trips to Xining and Utah-Qinghai academics have visited Purdue. In November 2014, Mr. Feng Yu will visit Qinghai to conduct data assessments and to meet environmental professionals and local planners in Qinghai in order to identify their needs and expectations for L-THIA-C as a decision making tool. Feng’s visit will be followed by a one-year research visit to Purdue University by Professor Zhao to maintain the strength of the collaboration. In 2015 the L-THIA-C team will lead a series of hands-on workshops for academics and city managers in Xining, and will work on extending the use of L-THIA-C to address environmental priorities in other parts of Qinghai Province, such as wetland protection in the Sanjiang Yuan Area. The long-term vision for this project is to build a comprehensive version of L-THIA-C that will be used throughout China to help with decision-making needs in rapidly urbanizing regions. The team anticipates that L-THIA-C will play an important role in sustainable development for China. This project was sponsored Purdue’s Discovery Park USCEES, Purdue Center for the Environment, and the Purdue Water Community. For more information about the U.S. China Ecopartnership for Environmental Sustainability please see: http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/ecopartnership/. U.S. Department of State Ecopartnership web site: http://ecopartnerships.lbl.gov.