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Sustainability
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Research and Application of Sustainable Water Management to Agricultural Development
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Research and Application of Sustainable Water Management to Agricultural Development

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Water Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 November 2025 | Viewed by 3342

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Qiang Li

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Natural Sciences, University of Houston-Downtown, Houston, TX 77001, USA
Interests: environmental biogeochemistry; water quality; soil health; nutrient management
Dr. Vinayak S. Shedekar

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Ohio State University, 257 Agricultural Engineering, 590 Woody Hayes Drive, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
Interests: agricultural water management; involves monitoring and modeling of soil health; hydrology; water quality from field- to watershed scales
Dr. Chunhao Gu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Plant and Soil Science, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA
Interests: environmental geochemistry; soil chemistry; nutrient cycling; biogeochemistry; soil fertility

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Water is recognized as the most vital resource for sustainable agricultural development worldwide. In the 21st century, securing an adequate supply of clean water constitutes one of the foremost challenges. Agriculture consumes over 80% of water resources and contributes more than 50% of excess nutrient loads to different scale of waterbodies, posing threats to aquatic ecosystem and human societies. Sustainable agriculture must address the dual challenge of increasing food production while managing the risks of drought, flooding, and water quality degradation under changing climate conditions.

Advances in sustainable water management are essential to achieving agricultural goals. Given the pressing water scarcity and climate change worldwide, considerable effort is needed to devote over time to tackle the agricultural challenges via both directions. The first direction is to increase water use efficiency, which is directly to decrease the quantity of clean water introduced into agricultural ecosystem, while the other one is to improve water quality, which is indirect to increase the availability of clean water for agricultural usage eventually by decreasing nutrients emitted from agricultural ecosystem to mitigate the contamination of waterbodies. Both directions require comprehensive research for these specific issues to induce innovative solutions for sustainable agriculture development.

This Research Topic aims to facilitate knowledge exchange on the fundamental causes and mechanisms of improving water quantity and quality in agricultural setting and its specific and continuous impacts on farmland, water resources, and ecosystems, which exemplified the value of sustainability nicely and is also well-aligned with the scope of Sustainability Journal. This Special Issue also aims to fulfill the priority of Sustainability Journal for “building a community of authors and readers to discuss the latest research and develop new ideas and research directions”.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Reduction of the use of freshwater and improve agricultural resilience.
  • Conservation of surface and groundwater quantity.
  • Mitigation of soil salinity by application of nontraditional water sources in agriculture.
  • Characterization of nutrient transport (dissolved and/or particulate forms) across the soil–water continuum (e.g., edge-of-field runoff) via long-term monitoring program and/or data mining techniques.
  • Developing effective best management practices (BMPs) for soil erosion and water loss.
  • Advancing models (e.g., Soil and Water Assessment Tool) to improve decision support and management at the context of climate change.
  • Increasing stakeholder adoption of BMPs.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Qiang Li
Dr. Vinayak S. Shedekar
Dr. Chunhao Gu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • water quantity and quality
  • agricultural sustainability
  • nutrient transport
  • BMPs

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

24 pages, 504 KiB  
Article
Prioritization of Water Footprint Management Practices and Their Effect on Agri-Food Firms’ Reputation and Legitimacy: A Best–Worst Method Approach
by Marcelo Werneck Barbosa, María de los Ángeles Raimann Pumpin and Gonzalo Vargas
Sustainability 2025, 17(8), 3453; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17083453 - 13 Apr 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 339
Abstract
Agricultural production is responsible for most of the withdrawal of water volume. There has been increasing the pressure on stakeholders to adapt water usage behavior and manage water resources. In this context, water footprint management (WFM) practices have been implemented. Despite the positive [...] Read more.
Agricultural production is responsible for most of the withdrawal of water volume. There has been increasing the pressure on stakeholders to adapt water usage behavior and manage water resources. In this context, water footprint management (WFM) practices have been implemented. Despite the positive benefits of the adoption of WF practices, the selection and prioritization of WFM practices remains a challenge. In addition, the effects that each of these individual practices have on reputation and legitimacy have not been investigated. To fill these research gaps, this study determined the relative priority of seven different WFM practices and the relative importance of each of these practices to increase agri-food firms’ reputation and legitimacy. This study applied the best–worst method (BWM) with a set of expert Chilean professionals in the field. The practice related to the promotion of the measurement of the water footprint throughout the supply chain was considered the most vital and the one with the greatest effects on firms’ reputation and legitimacy. The practice related to the establishment of water auditing and control systems was considered the least important and the one that generates lower effects on firms’ reputation and legitimacy. Our study also found that lack of financial resources is the main barrier to WFM implementation. These findings are useful for companies that are not capable of developing a complete program of WFM adoption due to lack of resources to implement all these practices. By knowing the importance of each practice, farmers can select the practices that will bring the greatest benefits. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Research and Application of Sustainable Water Management to Agricultural Development)
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13 pages, 432 KiB  
Article
A Comprehensive Evaluation of Water-Saving Society Construction in Xinxiang, Henan Province, China
by Mingliang Jiang and Chengcai Zhang
Sustainability 2024, 16(23), 10737; https://doi.org/10.3390/su162310737 - 6 Dec 2024
Viewed by 1050
Abstract
Water is a crucial and fundamental resource. It is well known that agricultural cultivation, industrial production, and human daily life are not possible without water. Efficiently utilizing water resources is of great significance for achieving global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In order to [...] Read more.
Water is a crucial and fundamental resource. It is well known that agricultural cultivation, industrial production, and human daily life are not possible without water. Efficiently utilizing water resources is of great significance for achieving global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In order to improve water use efficiency in various industries and promote water-saving development, China has been implementing water-saving society construction since 2002. Henan Province is the main grain-producing area in China, with wheat production accounting for a quarter of the country’s total. As the core area of “Central Plains Agricultural Valley” in Henan Province, Xinxiang City plays an important role in agricultural technology innovation and agricultural production. However, Xinxiang City is facing problems of water scarcity and pollution, which constrain the sustainability of agricultural production. Therefore, building a water-saving society can solve the current water problems faced by Xinxiang City and ensure the sustainable development of the economy and society. This study built an evaluation index system for water-saving society construction in Xinxiang, Henan Province, China. The proposed evaluation index system includes 20 evaluation indices from six aspects—integrated, agricultural water, industrial water, domestic water, water ecology and environment, and water-saving management—and then divides its development level into several stages. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was adopted to calculate the index weight. Then, a comprehensive evaluation model for water-saving society construction in Xinxiang City was established by combining it with grey relative analysis (GRA). The results showed that the overall level of water-saving society construction in Xinxiang City is in the excellent stage, whereas water consumption per CNY 10,000 of GDP, the effective utilization coefficient of irrigation water, the reuse rate of industrial water, and the leakage rate of urban water supply network are all in the good stage. However, the urban recycled water utilization rate is still in the poor stage. These research results can effectively and reasonably reflect the development level of water-saving society construction in Xinxiang City and guide the continued implementation of water-saving society construction. At the same time, the comprehensive evaluation of water-saving society construction helps to formulate and adjust water resource management policies and measures; it also holds significant value for sustainable water management and combating water scarcity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Research and Application of Sustainable Water Management to Agricultural Development)
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19 pages, 6688 KiB  
Article
Intermittent Drip Irrigation Soil Wet Front Prediction Model and Effective Water Storage Analysis
by Zhu Zhu, Muhammad Waseem Rasheed, Muhammad Safdar, Baolin Yao, Hudan Tumaerbai, Abid Sarwar and Lianyong Zhu
Sustainability 2024, 16(21), 9553; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16219553 - 2 Nov 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1372
Abstract
The depth and width of drip infiltration play a critical role in designing effective irrigation strategies. However, existing models primarily focus on continuous irrigation and fail to predict wetting patterns under intermittent drip irrigation. This study developed an infiltration model to estimate soil [...] Read more.
The depth and width of drip infiltration play a critical role in designing effective irrigation strategies. However, existing models primarily focus on continuous irrigation and fail to predict wetting patterns under intermittent drip irrigation. This study developed an infiltration model to estimate soil moisture depth and width under intermittent drip irrigation and identified strategies that enhance effective water storage. Indoor soil box simulations were conducted, with continuous drip irrigation as the control. Results showed that intermittent irrigation increased infiltration width and reduced depth, maximizing water storage efficiency. We recommend adopting an intermittent irrigation system with 1.5 h of irrigation followed by a 0.5 h interval, repeated four times. This system increased effective water storage by up to 16.23% compared to continuous irrigation. The proposed method is suitable for sandy loam farmland in southern Xinjiang and can significantly improve water use efficiency in arid regions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Research and Application of Sustainable Water Management to Agricultural Development)
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