Jia-Jing Dong

The Yellow River Basin, as one of China's major agricultural production regions, faces significant challenges related to agricultural water scarcity. Therefore, exploring the decoupling relationship between agricultural water use and output value in the basin is of great importance for promoting the intensive use of water resources and sustainable agricultural development in this basin. Based on provincial-level data from 2004 to 2024, this study employs the Tapio decoupling model, the super-efficiency SBM model, and grey relational analysis to examine the decoupling status, dynamic characteristics, and influencing factors, while also validating the results through an analysis of agricultural water-use efficiency. The results indicate that agricultural water use and output value in the basin have generally decoupled over time, with strong decoupling as the dominant pattern. Spatially, the middle and lower reaches are mainly characterized by strong decoupling, whereas some areas in the upper reaches exhibit weak decoupling. The nine provincial-level regions can be classified into four categories: continuous optimization, leapfrogging improvement, alternating strong-weak fluctuations, and decoupling lagging. Climate risk and advances in agricultural technology are identified as the key influencing factors. Accordingly, it is recommended to accelerate the decoupling process in the upper reaches, strengthen policy support for areas facing high climate risks, promote technological upgrading, and implement differentiated strategies to facilitate the coordinated decoupling of agricultural water use and output value across the basin.