Impact of Climate Warming on Cropland Water Use Efficiency in Northeast China Based on BESS Satellite Data

Understanding the long-term dynamics of cropland water use efficiency (WUE) and its underlying environmental drivers is essential for ensuring food and water security, particularly for regions facing intensified climate change. Here, we investigated the spatial patterns and long-term trends of gross primary productivity (GPP), evapotranspiration (ET), and WUE in cropland ecosystems across Northeast China during the past two decades as the nation’s primary commodity grain base using the time-series Breathing Earth System Simulator (BESS) products. Subsequently, the ridge regression method was used to quantitatively disentangle the relative contributions of key climatic variables to the observed WUE trends of cropland. Our results revealed a pronounced decreasing gradient in both GPP and ET along the southeast–northwest direction. A significant increase in GPP was observed over the 20-year period (p < 0.01), with 95.94% of the cropland area showing positive trends. ET showed a slight, non-significant increase (p > 0.05), though 82.77% of pixels exhibited positive trends, particularly in the northwest. Consequently, WUE showed a widespread and significant enhancement (p < 0.01), with approximately 98% of cropland pixels exhibiting increasing trends. Attribution analysis identified air temperature as the dominant environmental variable, accounting for 92.4% of the observed WUE increase, while solar radiation and precipitation contributed modestly (3.4% and 3.2%, respectively). Our findings underscore the predominant role of thermal conditions in shaping the carbon–water coupling efficiency of agroecosystems in semi-arid to semi-humid transition zones. This study provides quantitative evidence that warming climate, rather than changes in water availability or radiation, has been the primary climatic factor driving the improved cropland WUE over the past two decades. These insights have important implications for developing adaptive water management strategies to enhance agricultural climate resilience in Northeast China and similar regions worldwide.