A reasonable assessment of the contribution of the water resources in a river basin to domestic crops supplies will be the first step in balancing the water–food nexus. Our results showed that although the Yellow River basin had reduced its virtual water outflow, its importance to crop production in China had been increasing when water footprint networks were considered. Our complexity-based approach provides a new perspective for understanding changes in a basin with a severe water shortage.

To understand the dynamics of a coupled human and natural system (CHANS) and promote its sustainability, we propose a conceptual pattern–process–service–sustainability cascade framework. The use of this framework is systematically illustrated by a review of CHANS research experience in China's Loess Plateau in terms of coupling landscape patterns and ecological processes, linking ecological processes to ecosystem services, and promoting social–ecological sustainability.

Based on soil profile data at depths of 5 cm and 25 cm from 238 sampling sites, and on soil data from 32 soil moisture (SM) stations at depths of 5 cm, 15 cm, 25 cm, 40 cm, and 60 cm, we compiled a soil hydraulic properties (SHP) and SM dataset for a mountainous area, Northeastern QTP. The dataset provides information about SHP variability and SM trends at a large-scale mountainous area, thus offers opportunity for further understanding of water and energy processes over the QTP.

We created a residual tree-ring width chronology and reconstructed non-growth-season precipitation (NGSP) over the period spanning 1600–2005 in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau (SETP), China. Reconstruction model verification as well as similar variations of NGSP reconstruction and Palmer Drought Severity Index reconstructions from the surrounding region indicate the reliability of the present reconstruction. Our reconstruction is representative of NGSP variability of a large region in the SETP.

At present, there is a lack of time series of runoff generated by glacial regions in the world. In this paper, we quantified glacial runoff (including meltwater runoff and delayed runoff) in arid regions of China from 1961 to 2015 by using remote sensing datasets of glacier mass balance with high resolution. Glacier runoff is the water resource used by oases in arid regions of China. The long-term glacial runoff data can indicate the climate risk faced by different basins in arid regions.