Predicting land use change and water supply-demand risks under various climate and land use scenarios

The gap

Evidence profile

Sourced from the stated challenges and synthesized and future-work section of the source papers, classified as general, drawn from work published between 2025 and 2026, spanning 4 journals. Those papers have been cited 24 times in total.

Supporting evidence — 4 representative gaps

• Growth in agricultural water demand aggravates water supply-demand risk in arid Northwest China: more a result of anthropogenic activities than climate change (2025) · Hydrology and earth system sciences · cited 17× · doi

  The study faces challenges in predicting land use change and water supply-demand risks under various climate and land use scenarios. The research must account for the impact of climate change on the average crop water requirement in the TRB. The study needs to quantify the effects of human activities, such as agricultural expansion and urbanization, on water supply-demand dynamics.

  generalstated challenges
  Keywords: study faces challenges predicting land use change water
• AI Data-Centre Water Tracker: an open, reproducible referee for data-centre water burden (2026) · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · cited 6× · doi

  No study in this set evaluates desalination as a solution to data centre water scarcity specifically. One study quantifies water burden of AI data centres and identifies that closed-loop cooling relocates 92–95% of water footprint to the electricity grid, yet none of the desalination studies (prior studies) model or assess desalination as a mitigation strategy for data centre water demand or grid-dependent water relocation.

  generalsynthesizedevidence 5/5
  Keywords: study set evaluates desalination solution data centre water
• Water resources sustainability assessment through uncertain supply-demand modeling under scarcity conditions (2026) · Scientific Reports · doi

  One study assesses water resource sustainability using supply-demand modeling in a river basin under scarcity, and another study identifies that predictive analytics for water management are adopted in only 15% of rural contexts, yet no study combines predictive analytics with desalination planning to forecast data centre water demand and optimize desalination capacity allocation under climate variability and competing regional water demands.

  generalsynthesizedevidence 5/5
  Keywords: one study assesses water resource sustainability using supply-demand
• Study on multi-scenario and multi-water source allocation in Henan water supply area of Yellow River considering extreme drought (2025) · Frontiers in Environmental Science · cited 1× · doi

  Further research is needed to study the potential environmental impacts of the proposed water supply scenarios. The study of multi-resource allocation under extreme drought should be extended to other regions. The development of more accurate models for predicting water demand and supply is necessary. The investigation of the economic feasibility of the proposed water supply scenarios is required.

  generalfuture-work sectionevidence 4/5
  Keywords: further research needed study potential environmental impacts proposed

Questions about this gap