ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Water and Wastewater Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1568294
This article is part of the Research TopicTackling the Global Water Crisis: Risks, Challenges, and Sustainable SolutionsView all 3 articles
Spatiotemporal Dynamics and Driving Forces of Water Consumption Patterns: Insights from Jiangxi Province, China
Provisionally accepted
- Nanchang Institute of Technology, Nanchang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Investigating the spatiotemporal dynamics and underlying determinants of water consumption structure is of great importance for the strategic allocation of regional water resources and the promotion of economic and societal sustainability. This study, using Jiangxi province located in the Central China as a case study, employed information entropy and the center of gravity model to explore the spatiotemporal variations in water consumption patterns from 1999 to 2015. Additionally, the principal driving forces behind these changes were elucidated through factor analysis and grey correlation methods. The results indicated a consistent upward trajectory in Jiangxi's total water consumption over the past two decades, with agricultural water accounting for the majority but gradually decreasing. The water consumption structure in Jiangxi province remained relatively stable, evolving towards a more equitable distribution. Notably, the spatial configuration of water consumption revealed obvious regional disparities, with high information entropy values predominantly in the northern areas, including Nanchang, Jingdezhen, and Jiujiang, while lower values in the southeastern regions. The epicenter of water consumption gradually shifted towards southern Jiangxi. Concurrently, the agricultural water use center migrated toward the northern, whereas the industrial and domestic water use centers moved southwards. Contrasting natural influences, socioeconomic factors, exemplified by population, urban population proportion, total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fisheries, industrial output value, GDP, effective irrigation area, grain output value, and urban green coverage area, emerged as predominant, contributing to 67.7% of the alterations in water consumption patterns.
Keywords: water consumption structure, Spatiotemporal characteristics, Driving factor, Gravity center model, Information Entropy, factor analysis
Received: 30 Jan 2025; Accepted: 07 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Ouyang, Liu, Zhou and Yin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Weilin Liu, Nanchang Institute of Technology, Nanchang, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.