With an arid climate and shortage of water resources, the groundwater dependent ecosystems in the oasis–desert ecotone of the Shiyang River Watershed has been extremely damaged, and the water crisis in the oasis has become a major concern in the social and the scientific community. In this study, the degeneration characteristics of the groundwater ecological function was identified and comprehensive evaluated, based on groundwater depth data, vegetation quadrat and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from Landsat program. The results showed that (1) the suitable groundwater depth for sustainable ecology in the Shiyang River Watershed is about 2-4 m; (2) the terms of degenerative, qualitative and disastrous stages of the groundwater ecological function are defined with the groundwater depths of about 5 m, 7 m and 10 m; (3) generally, the groundwater ecological function in the oasis-desert ecotone of the lower reaches of Shiyang River Watershed is weak with an area of 1 397.9 km² identified as the severe deterioration region, which accounted 74.7% of the total area. In the meantime, the percentages of the good, mild and moderate deterioration areas of groundwater ecological function are 3.5%, 5.5% and 16.3%, respectively, which were mainly distributed in the Qingtu lake area and the southeastern area of the Shoucheng town; (4) the degradation and shrinkage of natural oasis could be attributed to the dramatic groundwater decline, which is generally caused by irrational use of water and soil resources. This study could provide theoretical basis and scientific support for the decision-making in environmental management and ecological restoration of the Shiyang River Watershed.

Over-exploitation of groundwater in North China Plain (NCP) has resulted in a series of eco-environment problems. Sustainable use of groundwater resources in NCP, in particular management of groundwater resource carrying capacity (GRCC), faces an unprecedented challenge. Here we define GRCC, and a new assessment method is tentatively proposed and applied to evaluate GRCC based on the whole NCP, city administrative units and county administrative units. Our study divided the NCP into three zones, i.e. non-overexploited non-overloaded zone (NNZ), overexploited but non-overloaded zone (ONZ), and overexploited overloaded zone (OOZ). Results confirmed 27.6% of counties belonged to NNZ. However, 58.9% of counties and NCP as a whole belonged to ONZ, and 13.5% of counties belonged to OOZ. Spatially, NNZs were mainly distributed in Beijing, parts of eastern coastal cities and Henan Province. OOZs were mostly distributed in middle-eastern part of Cangzhou, parts of Dezhou, Tianjin and Binzhou, and the remaining areas belonged to ONZs. We suggest two approaches for enhancing GRCC, ⅰ) increasing the amount of available groundwater and ⅱ) improving the water use efficiency. An increase of 11.0 billion cubic meters to the available groundwater levels combined with water use efficiency improvements up to 479 CNY per cubic meter of the world mean, the gross domestic product (GDP) sustained by groundwater in the NCP could reach 11.1 trillion CNY and maintain a 20 years of GDP development assuming the current rate of growth.